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In Spain, corruption and judicial accusations have come to overthrow governments on a national scale. It happened with Felipe González in 1996 and with Mariano Rajoy in 2018. But in the last municipal and regional elections, the heads of the list dotted with or directly accused in legal cases have obtained disparate results. PP candidates such as those from Arroyomolinos, Marbella or Badalona have triumphed with absolute majorities while others linked to the PSOE such as those from Ibiza or Móstoles have lost the baton. In other territories such as Cuadros (León) the winner was imputed to the polls and just got convicted in the Punic plot for corruption. “Corruption is not a fashionable issue,” analyzes the political scientist Carmen Lumbierres.
Huesca, Alcalá, Calvià and Ponferrada: four cities where the left lost due to its division on 28M
Further
In the Community of Madrid, two candidates headed the lists to retain the mayoralties in the municipalities of mostoles (207,000 inhabitants) and arroyomolinos (30,000). In the first, the socialist Noelia Posse he lost the mayoralty he had held since 2018 due to the victory of the PP, which with the help of Vox reached an absolute majority. The second largest city in Madrid after the capital has opted to change its councilor after Posse has been embroiled in two types of scandals in recent years.
On the one hand, for hiring their own relatives in the consistory and, on the other, the ITV case: recently the Madrid Court ordered the reopening of the case against her and other members of her corporation for supposed favorable treatment to a company despite the fact that he maintained debts with the municipal corporation. At first, the court had understood that not only was there no crime but that it had done what was best for the municipal coffers.
The results of Posse and the PSOE in Móstoles contrast with those obtained by the PP in Arroyomolinos, where it has improved a lot since 2019 and will be able to continue governing with the help of Vox. The candidate and mayoress, Ana Millán, ‘number three’ of Isabel Díaz Ayuso in the regional PP, revalidates her mandate in the middle of a judicial investigation for alleged political corruption and charging from a contractor businessman of her town hall. He has gone from the five councilors he got in 2019 to the eight councilors that will allow him to retain the mayoralty with the support of the extreme right and he has also won a seat in the regional Assembly, which means that he will be capacity and his case will go to the hands of the Superior Court of Madrid.
Another Popular Party candidate has achieved an overwhelming majority despite being charged in the municipal elections. This is Xavier García Albiol, who went to the polls in Badalona accused of an allegedly irregular installation of antennas when he was mayor and with a request for two years and ten months in prison by the Prosecutor’s Office. The electoral success a few months after the imprisonment request was known has been unappealable: 18 councillors, four above the absolute majority, and the best result of the PP in the Catalan town.
From Ourense to Parla passing through Marbella
Gonzalo Pérez Jácome, mayor of Ourense for Democracia Ourensana, arrived at the polls at a difficult time last Sunday. The newspaper La Región published a series of audios in which the councilor boasted about how to launder money and the Prosecutor’s Office decided to open an investigation while he denounced the placement of microphones in his office.
? We have won the municipal elections.
Thank you Ourense ?? C – 10
? PP – 7
? PSOE – 6
? BNG – 4— Gonzalo Pérez Jácome -Mayor of Ourense- (@gonzalojacome) May 28, 2023
The result has been 6,500 votes and three more councilors for Pérez Jácome compared to 2019. Four councilors of the absolute majority but with options to govern if he once again obtains the support of the Popular Party, which has supported him at the head of the Ourense capital since 2019.
Without imputation involved, the suspicions and legal cases revealed by elDiario.es have not taken their toll on Ángeles Muñoz, senator and mayoress of Marbella for the Popular Party either. She has obtained 600 more votes than in 2019 and the same number of councilors, a total of 14 councilors who mark just the absolute majority.
As this newspaper has revealed, Muñoz’s stepson is one of the defendants in a drug-trafficking and money-laundering case pursued in the National Court regarding a criminal organization based in Marbella. A case in which the signs of corruption surrounding the mayoress have not been investigated and in which the tapped audios point, among other things, to the fact that Muñoz organized meetings between his accused stepson and her councillors. For the moment, too, the councilor is reluctant to inform the Senate about her heritage.
The presence of a drug trafficking defendant on their lists has not taken its toll on Vox either. The far-right formation has equaled the three councilors that it took out in Parla in 2019, although with 900 fewer votes, a few weeks after number three on its electoral list was arrested and accused of leading a drug trafficking organization.
In Eivissa, the judicial accusations have preceded an electoral turnaround. The PSOE, which in 2019 won the mayoralty with nine councillors, has fallen to seven councillors, while the PP has secured the mayoralty well above the absolute majority threshold. Rafael Ruiz, Socialist mayor, was head of the list a month after being charged in a plot of alleged corruption for rigging contracts at port facilities in the Balearic Islands to benefit private entities.
“Corruption is not a fashion issue”
Carmen Lumbierres, PhD in Political Science from the Complutense University of Madrid, explains to elDiario.es that there is no “clear theory” about the weight of corruption when it comes to going to the polls, but that the peak of citizen concern on this matter he came with the 15M movement or, in the case of the right, with the irruption of Ciudadanos, and that is far away. “At that time it weighed a lot, it was one of the axes of Spanish politics, to stop corruption. And there was zero or almost zero tolerance, but I think that stage, for now, closed after the 2010s, ”she analyzes.
For the political scientist, corruption is an issue that “of little interest to citizens. Surprisingly, there is no short-term electoral punishment.” And she cites, among other reasons, the times of the judicial processes, “very long” in comparison with the political and media deadlines. “People forget along the way what has happened, that makes it dissolve in time and in the consciousness of the voters.”
The vote, explains Lumbierres in statements to this newspaper, goes in another direction. “A much more emotional vote, of the moment and less evaluative. Corruption is not a fashion issue and people vote for other emotional aspects and like all fashions, when it touched the independence movement it touched that, but now it is not really punished ”.
Sentenced one day after winning
A judicial accusation does not prevent, beyond the ethical codes that the parties decide to apply or not apply, that a politician can appear in an election or continue in office. This can only be prevented by a conviction, which in some cases must be declared firm to take effect. In the Leonese town of Cuadros (2,000 inhabitants) the paths of Justice and politics have crossed and Marcos Martínez Barazón, independent mayor after being expelled from the PP, has been sentenced to eight and a half years of disqualification for corruption one day after obtaining an absolute majority at the polls.
Before going to the polls as an independent, Martínez Barazón was president of the León Provincial Council for half a year in 2014 for the PP, in addition to being mayor of Cuadros for more than three decades. He was expelled from the formation after spending two and a half months in provisional prison, he formed his own party to continue winning elections and this 2023 he has faced a double examination: that of the polls and that of the judges. At the polls he got an outstanding on May 28 with an absolute majority of seven councilors and 80 more votes than in 2019. A day later, however, he suspended the judicial test with a sentence of eight and a half years of disqualification for his involvement in the Punic plot.
The sentence on this Leon piece of the case, signed on May 29 and known on the 30th, attributes a crime of prevarication to him. According to the National Court, in the few months of 2014 in which he was at the head of the Martínez Barazón Provincial Council, he irregularly awarded 12,000 euros of institutional advertising to the companies of Alejandro de Pedro, considered the conspirator of the plot. The irregular system, which started with Isabel Carrasco as president, allowed invoices to be paid almost immediately, without any contracting procedure involved and preventing other media from being eligible for this institutional advertising.
The consequences of this conviction remain to be seen. The sentence is not final and can still be appealed to the Supreme Court. He was not disqualified when he appeared, but now the judges will have to decide if his sentence prevents him from taking the command baton of this town in Leon for the ninth consecutive legislature or if he will be able to exercise until the high court says the last word after his appeal, processing which usually takes more than a year and a half.
Convicted for sexist violence
Beyond corruption, a conviction for sexist violence has not prevented Matías González Cañón from increasing his support as a PP candidate in the Galician town of A Illa de Arousa (4,800 inhabitants), although the left has an absolute majority and has no options. to govern. As revealed by elDiario.es, González was sentenced in 2011 to serve the community for assaulting his partner, which ended with a broken tooth.
In that town, the PP with the convicted candidate has gone from four to five councilors and has added 400 more votes than the party in 2019. Something similar to what happened in Malpartida de Cáceres (4,100 inhabitants). Alfredo Aguilera, formerly of the Popular Party and now an independent, has obtained seven councilors and an absolute majority, improving the results of 2019 when he ran for the PP. Between the two elections, Aguilera was sentenced for assaulting his wife and the Justice declared that he could not continue leading the consistory. Last Sunday he obtained 54 votes and one mayor more than in the last municipal elections.
For Lumbierres, sexist violence is not an issue that leads voters to the polls either. “It is a type of terrorism against women, more than 1,200 women have been murdered since 2003, but it has not achieved a real mobilization in the Spanish electorate”, she explains. He also points to a “denial” of this crime among young men, together with the presence of Vox as “the third party in number of votes in this country” while “denying sexist violence.” Gender-based violence, he affirms, has a presence in the media but “it is part of the sociological landscape and we have become accustomed to this happening and it is not penalized, they are clear examples of what is forgivable, something like private or personal and not public”.
