In the spring of 2009, the owners of 49 homes located in the residential complex of La Quinta, in the municipality of Santa Úrsula, received the key to their new homes. Everything is in order except for one detail that has been driving the residents of this enclave in the north of Tenerife upside down for years: the lack of basic services in the area, such as public lighting or sewage treatment. Last January, in a sentence to which Mírame Televisión had access, a judge sentenced the members of the City Council Governing Board who granted the first occupation license without the construction company having completed the urbanization works.
Almost thirteen years after the move of the new residents of La Quinta began, the Criminal Court Number 1 of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in a ruling against which appeal is possible, considers the residents responsible for a crime of urban prevarication. four politicians who granted the first occupation license in a Government Meeting held on April 3, 2009: former mayor Ricardo García and former councilors María Eugenia Medina, Inmaculada Arbelo and Magdalena Luis. All of them members then of the Independent Association of Santa Úrsula (AISU), a municipal party twinned with the Canary Coalition (CC).
In addition to the year in prison, the judge also imposes on the four defendants a sentence of nine years of special disqualification from employment or public office, by election or appointment, at the local, regional, state and European levels. The trial that put Ricardo García on the bench, who was already convicted of prevarication in 2019 for placing 22 workers in the City Hall illegally, was held in July 2021, but the resolution was not issued until last January due to “the complexity of the matter”, as explained by the magistrate in the sentence.
The complexity of the matter involved putting together all the pieces of a story that starts from an administrative act that the judge considers “null and void”, the granting of the first occupation licenses without the urbanization works having been completed. To this end, during the investigation and the oral hearing, the testimonies of a judicial expert and of Local Police and Civil Guard officers, in addition to the declaration of several municipal technicians. All corroborated the illegal action of the City Council.
The ruling has a section dedicated to civil liability, where it is pointed out who has to take charge of completing the urbanization. In this case, the promoter company, Explotaciones Agropecuarias y Construcciones POL SA, which must complete the works “in the terms required in the building license”.
The building license that was granted in 2005, modified later in 2008, contemplated the necessary execution by the construction company of the urbanization infrastructures. In other words, the company was authorized to start building work, but in parallel it had to complete the start-up of all basic services, such as lighting or wastewater treatment, among others. What could not happen in any way, despite what happened, was to authorize the occupation of the properties without the promoter fulfilling all its part.
Ignored technicians
This was revealed by a municipal architect through a report, prepared on March 27, 2009, in which he stated that “the processing of the first occupation license was not feasible because it was subject to the completion of the urbanization works and the effective operation of all projected services”, according to the ruling.
The report was part of the file that was brought to the Governing Board on April 3, 2009, which was not attended, despite being a member, by the current mayor, Juan Acosta, also from AISU-CC. But this was not the only warning about the illegality of the licenses that those convicted ignored. During the session, the municipal secretary, who had just arrived at his position a few days before, warned that in the documentation there was no trace of the legal opinion that the legislation establishes as a prerequisite for the granting of permits. As stated in the sentence, at that moment there was a milestone that aroused the interest of the judge.
After the official warned that there was no legal opinion, the then municipal deputy secretary “stated that the report was being printed”, but the mayor and the rest of the members of the Local Government Board decided to go ahead without waiting for the document, in addition to ignoring the criteria of the municipal architect.
The deputy secretary’s report, signed a day before the Governing Board was held, but still on the printer on the date of the session, was “known to the defendants” when they made their decision, according to the judge’s conclusions. The opinion proposed as a resolution “that compliance with the provisions of the building license and the technical report must be required as a prerequisite to obtaining the first occupation license.” The same legal interpretation that, except for the defendants’ defenses, was upheld by all the experts who testified during the proceedings.
In the Governing Board there was an intervention by the then mayor that the judge places as one of the key elements to understand the arbitrary will of the members of the collegiate body. It should not be forgotten that for there to be a crime of prevarication, in addition to issuing an unfair resolution, the will and conscience of the perpetrators must be proven. That is why the ruling insists on the expression that the decision was made “knowingly” of its injustice. And as an example, a button.
During the session, Ricardo García was asked about the problem of granting the occupation of the houses without completing the urbanization works. The mayor’s response was that “it will be the City Council that will have to get the money from elsewhere and that the developer has to get rid of the urbanization and the City Council gives him the license.” A way of interpreting urban legality that did not leave the judge indifferent.
In a forceful paragraph of the sentence, the magistrate summarizes the behavior of the mayor in the following way to fit it like a sock in the crime of urban prevarication. “Ricardo García does not care that the technical report is negative, that the legal report does not exist and that the terms of the license have been contravened or that public money that is budgeted or destined for another purpose has to be used to finish some works that correspond to a private entity, because the important thing about all this is not the legality or the delivery of a home in optimal conditions for habitability, but rather that the developer has to get rid of the urbanization”.
Expert report
In case there was any doubt, a judicial expert studied the file and prepared an opinion for the criminal case on August 28, 2017. He reached the same conclusion as the rest of the technicians: “the first occupation license could not be granted to any building of La Quinta Roja, in the municipality of Santa Úrsula, as long as the urbanization was not received”.
The expert also found in his report the existence of “pathologies in the fire, irrigation, public lighting, purification and discharge facilities, thereby harming, and due to that resolution, the people who live in the buildings” of La Quinta.
The judge has no doubts about the criminal actions of the mayor, but neither about the other three councilors who voted in favor of the agreement in the Governing Board. Although they all tried to throw balls away during their statements, the sentence is blunt in concluding that “it is not enough to exclude criminal responsibility to allege an alleged ignorance of the basic rules related to the main functions of a city council, such as the granting of municipal licenses, alleging “it’s that they told me”, “it’s that I believed”, “it’s that I didn’t know””.
Throughout the instruction, it was documented on several occasions that the homes of La Quinta continued without basic resources. The last report of the Civil Guard that works in the criminal case is dated February 10, 2016, almost seven years after the first occupation license. The document specifies that the urbanization “still does not have the minimum services of public lighting, public water and wastewater treatment system.”
This is the second sentence against Ricardo García, who in 2019 avoided another trial through an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office for which he assumed a sentence of seven years of disqualification for illegally placing 22 people in the North Tenerife City Council. A way of proceeding in terms of hiring similar to that carried out by his successor in office between 2011 and 2015, Milagros Pérez (PP), who was also sentenced in 2019 to eight and a half years of disqualification for administrative prevarication. The recent history of Santa Úrsula is written in the courts.
