Rubén Doblas Gundersen (born 1990), better known by his pseudonym El Rubius, is a Spanish-Norwegian YouTube personality, whose channel primarily consists of gameplay and vlogs.
He isn’t only by far the most watched Spanish host, but currently has over 9.2 billion views and 39 million subscribers, which makes him the 36th most subscribed YouTuber in the world.
After long reflection, on January 18th, 2021 El Rubius announced his decision to move to the Principality of Andorra, a small country of about 50,000 inhabitants located in the Pyrenees between France and Spain which offers a quite business-friendly environment.
Following a call to assassinate him for his presumed selfish and unethical behavior, on January 30th El Rubius published a letter strongly criticizing viewpoints deemed not just unfair, but barbaric.
Most of his comments had been taken out of context and lacked truthful sources. Looking for an easy click, his critics unleashed a storm of insults, slander and incitement to hatred, demonstrating how rotten the climate of opinion in Spain actually was.
People would give their opinion unabashedly, merely based on headlines or the first search result obtained on Google, without a shred of critical thinking, not comparing or contrasting information.
All this resulted from the “accumulated resentment” against the new Internet professions: “What eats away at most traditional media is that a guy from his room has more impact than any of their broadcasts, for which they need to have 30 to 40 people working and use filming sets in which they have invested hundreds of thousands of euros”.
During the last 10 years, El Rubius has been paying almost half of what he earned to the Spanish state, despite the fact that most of his revenue comes from Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and the United States.
Nevertheless, El Rubius is treated by Hacienda, the almighty tax agency, as a delinquent “considered guilty as long as he doesn’t manage to prove the opposite”.
Just like thousands and thousands of other Spanish self-employed persons, he underwent repeated tax inspections. In his case, notes were issued to foreign financial institutions to check if he had hidden accounts overseas.
Following the vlogger’s recent announcement, Carlos Cruzado, leader of the Ministry of Finance’s technicians, accused him publicly of showing a tremendous lack of solidarity.
Besides that, other government officials have spread the rumor that El Rubius wasn’t moving to Andorra after all, suggesting that it was more than possible that he just pretended to live there, while in reality he would keep enjoying the sun and public services in Spain.
El Rubius even felt obliged to remind everybody that moving to another country isn’t illegal. “If I had gone to live in Germany, Norway or Japan, no one would have said anything.”
He lashed out against journalists from whom he would had expected a minimum of professionalism and rigor, but instead stated on the public television network RTVE that he was stealing from the Spanish people.
Doblas Gundersen also charged against former basketball player Juanma López Iturriaga, who repeatedly called him a bastard, and Communist Vice President Pablo Iglesias for retweeting those vituperations.
In addition, the influencer couldn’t believe that on TV there was room for collaborators such as Lis Duval, a self-proclaimed philosophy student, writer, poet and transsexual agitator, who during a program favored beheading tax evading YouTubers in public.
El Rubius wondered how it could be considered normal and acceptable to release such an outrageous statement and if that was the level of public debate in a civilized country.
He rightfully asked why those allegedly always ready to combat hate speech remained silent. Scapegoating him wouldn’t help improve the many underlying problems in Spain.
The Internet celebrity assured that he didn’t want to set a bad example for his younger followers. However, El Rubius insisted that there had to be a balanced relationship between the State and the citizen.
So if that premise wasn’t met, to make choices deemed appropriate for oneself in accordance with the law didn’t justify at all the treatment he has received in recent days.
In the face of those who branded him as selfish or unethical, El Rubius pointed out that most of his friends and colleagues, like Willyrex, Vegetta, INVICTHOR, The Grefg, Staxx, LOLiTo, Patry Jordan, Fargan or Alexby are already up in the mountains.
El Rubius said that because of the fame achieved in Spain he had to live with the blinds down all day for fear that someone recognized him and that for “simple things like going down to buy bread or going for a walk” he needed “the help of someone close to him”.
That might sound a little exaggerated and is probably the price of fame anyway, though who would like to be treated like a criminal for not being willing to be squeezed like a lemon?
In any case, El Rubius finally escaped from the trap that the average Spanish tax payer finds himself in, financing his own demise and the ongoing downfall of a once proud nation.
One of the reasons for all this rage in the spanish left comes from El Rubius being one of them, at least til he moved to Andorra to avoid huge tax payments in Spain.
Just don’t betray the Party! It will never forgive a renegade!