Tony Christie is on his ‘way to Tenerife’ - 12.10.2007

Despite a few setbacks on his journey the fabulous event has now been rescheduled for Saturday 22nd December, what better way to kick of the festive season!

Tenerife (K9 Animal Sanctuary) have changed the date initially due to the fact that it was going to clash with the Elton John Concert {for those of you that haven’t heard, it was a figment of someone’s imagination and is definitely not taking place!} And the main reason being that the Tenerife Cabildo have refused to financially support the event in any shape or form, after initially expressing their support.  
K9’s Marketing Director Ian Sharrock say’s “The Canarian Government supports virtually every live event on the Island and we were relying on them to help us finance ours. These concerts would have been good for the tourists, the residents and, of course, the animals too. Set-up costs are huge and as a registered charity we do not have the means to do it all ourselves, they said they would like to help back in July and have kept us waiting up till last Friday just to let us down.”
They received the ‘thanks but no thanks’ note via email, and not from the area of the Cabildo that they originally contacted.
K9 Tenerife Animal Sanctuary were relying on the concerts to raise much needed funds; the refuge which has been running for fifteen years and has saved thousands of abandoned and abused animals with no official funding is falling into disrepair.
For one night only Tony Christie will be appearing with Spanish icon, Rosana, Canarian by birth and a massive Latin American star.
The event is still taking place at Magma, Playa de las America, all tickets purchased to date will be honoured, if for any reason you can not make the new date a full refund will be given. Magma holds a maximum of 4,500 if they could fill it how wow would that be! Tickets are now 25 euros!
K9 is an integral part of the community and trying so hard to make a difference, but from the treatment that K9 have received Ian Sharrock feels that, Tenerife is a first class tourist destination but a third world country in terms of animal welfare.
It wasn’t as if K9 were asking for full funding, a mere 100,000 euros. Put this into context 330,000 euros has been put aside by the Cabildo to encourage tourists to use the official Tenerife website, ABTA conference also being held in Adeje has a budget of 1.5M euros, 639,000 has been budgeted to improve the Las Americas entrance which the delegates will use when they visit the south.

K9 would welcome the help of the whole community. K9 would like to hear from any businesses or individuals who would like to sponsor segments of the event; the publicity both within Tenerife and the UK is going to be immense.

In the next edition of Canarian Weekly we will update you on the funding situation and attempt to find the real reason for their request being declined from the Cabildo.