Lobo Estepario: Subsidies and luxury chalets behind the anti-establishment rhetoric

Lobo Estepario: Subsidies and chalets after anti-establishment speeches

He preaches living in a van and spitting on the system. But circulating reports suggest that he occupies two chalets in Peralta, Asturias, and receives the Minimum Vital Income. The contrast between his account and reality is the focus of a controversy that has not left anyone indifferent.

The product that subsidizes itself

This is not a spontaneous phenomenon. It is described as a successful product of the ideological 'café for all': an actor who, since the San Sebastián Festival, had the industrial network ready to export his melancholy of burning. Expensive clothes, three-day beard... the beast is marketing. Some maintain that his discourse, specialized in making noise, always hits the black heart of the ghetto. In other words, he is a connected person who has subsidized his own flag.

Unpaid fines and occupancy

The accusations go beyond style. He has been criticized for being fined hundreds of times for camping in natural reserves and next to houses. Fines that, according to arguments, he neither pays nor forfeits. In another country, this character would have had to spend all day fishing to eat or he would have been arrested for disturbing public order. Here, however, he is allowed to occupy and can apply for social aid. The conclusion drawn is that Spain is a paradise for benefit hunters, and that the law is a toy.

The State as Mercadona

The debate becomes philosophical. Some defend that birth is an imposition and that, therefore, the State must support you and make life's passage as unintrusive as possible. Against this, it is argued that it is like asking Mercadona (a major Spanish supermarket) to give you groceries for free just because. The State is not obligated to give you what you want simply by existing. The comparison, though crude, illustrates two opposing ways of understanding the relationship between citizen and administration.

Anesthesia or criticism?

And in the middle, the fundamental doubt: is Lobo Estepario a critic of the system or just another product? Some maintain that he sells, and he sells very well, because his trinc seek anesthesia. He is compared to any other mass entertainment: an anesthetic for those afflicted with cognitive dissonance. His trinc believe they are different, but there is no difference between him and the rest of the entertainment industry. All he does is give people exactly what they ask for.

In another country, this character would have had to work to eat or he would have been arrested. In Spain, he continues giving rallies and collecting subsidies. The system he criticizes allows him to live precisely off what he rejects. And meanwhile, the audience continues to grow. The surprising fact: despite the accusations, no one has managed to make him pay a single fine.