The explosion of the audit by Puertos del Estado regarding the Fundación Puertos de Las Palmas has left Beatriz Calzada in absolute isolation within the traditional port community. The severity of the report, which reveals consecutive losses of 138,660.30 euros in 2024 and 128,115.91 euros in 2025, has fractured the board of directors. The technical bankruptcy and the questioning of the funding model have caused a deafening silence among the most influential voices in the sector: neither the historical figures of maritime chronicle nor the reference specialized media have come forward to break a lance in favor of the president of the Port Authority, despite the institution’s attempts to shape the narrative.
However, the maneuver incurred serious gaps in oversight: platforms were contracted without audits by the EGM or the OJD, a standard requirement from the State Intervention to justify the use of public funds. Furthermore, the meeting ignored the provincial nature of the entity by banning the presence of media from Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, or municipalities with direct port activity such as Telde and Agüimes, excluding also oversight heads such as Canarias Ahora —which offered to cover the event for free in exchange for answers— or Atlántico Hoy, the media outlet that has most investigated the accounts of the Fundación Puertos de Las Palmas.
The distancing of the totems of local maritime journalism evidences the depth of the rift. The veteran Juan Francisco Fonte —a key figure in the port environment, a member of the Foundation itself, former corporate advisor, employed at Atlantis Publicidad until his retirement, and a contributor to ‘La Provincia’ in the ‘Desde mi noray’ section— has avoided endorsing the management of the Coalición Canaria (CC) leadership. This distancing from the old guard is joined by the dean of the specialized media in the islands, Radio Muelle, which has remained aloof from the image laundering campaigns. Media support for Calzada has been reduced to zero even with the satellite platform in the Astican orbit, Infopuertos, exposing the lack of critical density in defense of the current management.
Thisdeployment of ‘paid journalism’ denounced by Canarias Ahora this weekend has not managed to neutralize the accounting inconsistencies of the state report, which insists that the Foundation is artificially sustained through more than 300,000 euros in annual rent from a building of public heritage ceded by the port itself. The discredit is completed with the allegedly clientelistic use of the entity’s structure: the employer’s association Fedeport, which pays an annual fee of 5,000 euros as a patron, shepherds and establishes its physical headquarters in the offices of the Fundación Puertos de Las Palmas, consolidating a scheme of opacity that officials demand to dismantle immediately.
