La vie (and Santiago Pérez) is waving

It would be necessary to pause for a moment on what seems most obvious and is not so obvious: the relationship between the PSOE and the complaint before the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office in July 2005 that finally led to the prosecution of the politicians and officials, at that time allegedly involved. , and in his final sentence twelve years later by the Provincial Court, ratified in March 2019 by the Supreme Court: seven years in prison for Miguel Zerolo and the former Town Planning Councilor Manuel Parejo, four years and six months for the former Secretary of Management of Urban Planning, Víctor Reyes, another four years for the former manager of Urban Planning, José Tomás Martín, and five years and three months in prison for businessmen Ignacio González (former president of the province’s Chamber of Commerce) and Antonio Plasencia, one of the largest builders in Tenerife and Canary Islands, and president of the employers’ association of the Fepeco sector. For years the PSOE did not want to know anything about the operation on the land of Las Teresitas. What’s more: the socialist municipal group, headed at the time by Emilio Fresco, voted in favor – like the rest of the parties with a presence in the consistory – of the sale of the land to the businessmen, acquired by the Santa Cruz City Council –according to investigated and certified later in court – at a price well above its market value and under a particularly scandalous circumstance: part of those lands were already municipal property.

To Santiago Pérez and some of his political disciples the operation seemed, to say the least, highly suspicious, if not alarming. Perhaps he envisioned a great cause against zerolismo that he could unleash Canarian Coalition, at least in the Santacrucero municipality. Emilio Fresco stopped him dead. He had supported the sale from the conviction that it was the best for the capital and had no direct evidence of any irregularity. Fresco, like other councilors, had full confidence in the professionalism – demonstrated for more than twenty years – of the secretary of the Santa Cruz town hall, Eugenio de Zárate, who was later prosecuted, although the accusation for prevarication was withdrawn. Emilio Fresco believed that a complaint against the purchase and sale of Las Teresitas would have no future and, in the end, would harm the PSOE. And so he communicated it to the still general secretary of the PSC-PSOE, Juan Carlos Alemán. It was decided, therefore, that the Socialists would refrain from any pronouncement in this regard. And that more or less imposed and self-imposed silence was the origin of the Ísula Viable association.

Insula Viable had no other sense than the instrumental. It was a political-judicial work tool. A brilliant occurrence by Santiago Pérez to act legally with his hands free, although initially he did not even know to anyone that he was part of it. His visible face was José Ángel Martín Bethencourt, at that time a very young militant with one foot in the Socialist Youth and the other in the party. Later he would become the shadow, the cloth of tears, the master barista and the lightning rod for the anger of Patricia Hernández, his general secretary in the JJSS, who would join Santiago for later, when compañero Santiago was ousted, to distance himself at full speed so as not to touch him with a stick and now, once again, to be his patricita. Pérez drafted, with some technical help, the complaint filed by Ínsula Viable. Only some time later, when the Juan Carlos Alemán and the Emilio Frescos were almost history, did the Socialist senator Teresito come out of the closet and claim the glory of the judicial prosecution of Zerolo et alii.

It means that it was not the PSOE, but one of its historical leaders, shielded behind several comrades who are not very publicly known and some members of the socialist pibada, who took the judicial initiative in the Las Teresitas case. The management – ​​not to mention the councilors – abstained and denied time and time again that the party was involved in the complaint (and they were not lying at all). On the other hand, the dissidents did not avoid launching hundreds of putrid gossip on leaders and councilors, and only pity stops me when it comes to giving the names of those who were shouting on the corners of Santa Cruz (and La Laguna) who Socialist councilors backed the counter-sale of the beach front plots in exchange for dizzying bribes that included millions of euros in tax havens or rubbish bags, houses and apartments, low-end and high-end cars or Asian luxury vacations. The history of the socialist group of Santa Cruz is that of their chronic collapse between civil wars, until they were so exhausted that they have ended up voting for Patricia Hernández and whatever God wants.

But, in effect, life is undulating, and once again it will be the PSOE that encourages the case of Las Teresitas to return to the courts. The modification of the crime of embezzlement of public funds – for which the penalties are deducted – has put long teeth on those convicted of corruption in several Spanish prisons. It should be remembered that article 2.2 of the Penal Code states that “those criminal laws that favor the prisoner will have retroactive effect, even if a final sentence had been handed down when they entered into force and the subject was serving a sentence”. According to the new text, the penalties for embezzlement of public funds are reduced to four years when there is no “profit motive”. In the case of Miguel Zerolo – the most politically relevant – illicit enrichment could not be proven at any time, despite the fact that several letters rogatory were sent to as many tax havens in Europe and America to investigate it. However it is worth noting one nuance. The reformed norm specifies that the penalties will be the same (up to eight years) if there were “appropriation of public property that is in charge of the authority or public official”, but allowing a third party to appropriate it is also punishable. In the mamanduria of Las Teresitas, didn’t Ignacio González and Antonio Plasencia play the role of third parties? For the lawyers of the former senator and the deputy mayor, no. They have announced that they will file an appeal so that the reformed law is applied to their clients, which, together with the fact that they have already served more than a third of the sentence, would mean, if the courts agree with them, the immediate termination of the sentence. sentence.

And again Santiago Pérez appears. Now he is in the Senate, because he has once again returned to the PSOE, not because he has reflected, but because the PSOE has changed and now fits him like a glove. Returning to socialist militancy has not led him to get rid of the electoral group with which he ran for the municipal elections in 2019, of course, because a group of friends and colleagues depend on the beach bar, but he did return to the Upper House, as a senator autonomous. And as a socialist senator he votes, of course, in favor of the reform of the crimes of sedition and embezzlement. Obediently, because this is the last train that he can take in his political life, and he will not stay on the platform, as those of Avante will stay in a few months, as those of X Tenerife did at the time. Not only does he vote for it, but he asks for the floor and justifies the reform, although curiously – could he be the subconscious? – He makes no reference to the crime of embezzlement. He is very applauded and it shows that he loves it. He explains it to the taste of the most oligrophrenic sanchista. The Government has the full right to try to survive through parliamentary alliances. That is not the question, warns Santiago Pérez, who has always wanted to have all the questions and all the answers as his heritage. The question is how far the PP is willing to go, of course. He closes it very well. Who has brought and guaranteed freedom in Spain? «The progressive forces, and among them, the PSOE». That’s a pretty bold observation, by the way, and probably untrue. At least if it refers to public liberties. If, instead, he was talking about Miguel Zerolo, perhaps he would be right. Because it is indisputable that in recent days, and thanks to its rinses with the Catalan independentistas, the PSOE is facilitating not only the full freedom of Oriol Junqueras and his companions, but also that of Miguel Zerolo.