The mayor of Arona, José Julián Mena, remains in the particular ranking of the Ministry of Politics Territorial as the local councilor who received the most public funds in 2021. However, the sum received by the socialist is inflated by more than 13,000 euros, as this newspaper has been able to prove. Although at first glance it may seem paradoxical, it is not that the numbers handled by the Ministry led by Isabel Rodríguez García are incorrect, but that Mena’s case is unique in that remuneration is computed that, strictly speaking, correspond to 2020 So no: the mayor of the tourist town in the south of Tenerife it is not the one with the highest payroll in the Autonomous Community. Mena receives an annual salary – he is on a full-time basis – of 70,000 euros. It is true that it is above the average, which amounts to 43,610 euros, and it is also true that it is among the highest in the Archipelago, but it is no less true than the statistics from the Salary Information System for Administration Positions (ISPA) It places him in a pole position that is actually occupied by the mayor of La Laguna, Luis Yeray Gutiérrez, with the 77,565 euros entered in 2021.
What happened with José Julián Mena is that the PSOE suspended him from militancy in mid-September 2020 after the internal conflict and the bankruptcy suffered by both the Aronero government and the socialist municipal group. It was not until March 2021 when the Justice provisionally suspended the decision of the PSOE, which would end up being annulled by a ruling on September 27 of last year. In fact, Mena’s relationship with the party has returned to normal, to the point that he is the socialist candidate to repeat as mayor of Arona in 2023. However, the suspension of membership affected the mayor’s remuneration in those months of interim and confrontation, and those amounts were not paid to him, all at once, until last year, hence the 70,000 euros of the 2021 salary rise in the ISPA statistics to more than 83,000. In short, Mena is the fourth best-paid local councilor in the Islands after those of La Laguna, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
