There is not mena case. Judge Nelson Díaz Frías, head of the Investigating Court Number 4 of Arona, yesterday announced to the parties the resolution of August 17 in which he declares the provisional dismissal of the lawsuit filed against the mayor of Arona, José Julián Mena, by three councilors from the PSOE itself, Dácil León, Juan Sebastián Roque and Luis García, the latter expelled from the socialist formation in 2020, when Mena himself formally resisted that same expulsion proposed by his party.
The order establishes that both Mena and the municipal secretary Pedro Javier Hernández – today a legal technician in Sports at the Cabildo de Tenerife – acted in accordance with the law at the request of these three councilors that the president go to the group of Non-Assigned after that the PSOE open an expulsion file.
In November 2020, the PSOE announced that it would expel Mena from the party, but the mayor filed an appeal against that decision. However, before this was resolved, the three councilors asked to be transferred to the Non-Appointed group, which did not happen, because Mena won the appeal against his party and managed to have said file annulled by the courts (September 2021).
Given Mena’s refusal to join the Non-Appointed group, the three mayors filed the complaint, in January 2021, in which they accused both the mayor and the municipal secretary of prevaricating and committing legal fraud for their maintenance in the Socialist Group . They argued that the PSOE had expelled Mena and that it had also communicated it to the Arona City Council. In the plenary session held on November 26, 2020 (after the expulsion was known), the municipal secretary included in the agenda the point in which the communication of the PSOE and the pass to the non-attached of the mayor were recorded. However, before the plenary session was held, Mena appealed the expulsion, for which the secretary had to make another report stating this fact.
Precisely that resource would be the one that would lead him to report favorably on the mayor’s decision to avail himself of article 70 of the Municipal Organic Regulation. This empowers him to withdraw the aforementioned item from the agenda, so it was not passed on to those not assigned, contrary to what the complainants intended.
The known order now establishes that the two reports made by the secretary “are totally consistent with each other. The first of them is based on the non-record of any resource. And the second, on the knowledge of its existence”.
Regarding the decision of the alderman, the ruling states that, “based on the provisions of article 70 of the Municipal Organic Regulation, no vice of illegality has been observed up to this moment, as it has a favorable legal report, being indifferent and irrelevant, from the criminal point of view, the fact that the aforementioned mayor has never used said power before.”
This is the second legal victory for José Julián Mena, after winning the appeal a year ago against the expulsion of members of his party. He is still mayor and socialist.
They do not know yet if they will present an appeal for reform
While Mena remains silent -he will not speak until he knows the steps of the PSOE on his candidacy for the next elections in Arona-, the three plaintiffs have transferred that they are going to assess with their lawyer to file an appeal for reform or not to the car known yesterday. They have three days to do it.
