Internal Affairs investigates whether Tienda notified Espinosa that he was being investigated

In a conversation intervened during the investigation, the agents indicate that Tienda informs Espinosa that “his people”, in relation to the civil guards of his headquarters, “are looking for the papers”, although he does not specify what he means with those documents. This conservation takes place in November 2020 in Tenerife.

The information that Tienda transfers to Espinosa is likely to have to do with the Cuarteles case, already underway on that date, but given the trust between the two, lThe code names used, and the invisible codes that unite both, Internal Affairs is now snooping if there was a crack when the Mediator case, opened in January 2022, was under summary secrecy. There is no proof yet, but it is a path that they want to have clear, and thus cover the cracks, in some investigations that affect high-ranking officers of the Civil Guard.

Tienda was fired last Wednesday night after details of another operation in which he is involved were published, the so-called Barracks case, for which thirteen commands from all over Spain contracted the reforms of their barracks with the businessman lanzaroteNo Angel Ramon Tejera de Leonbetter known as Mon, allegedly in exchange for bites.

The recently appointed area chief general of the Civil Guard of Canary IslandsJuan Hernández Mosquera, was the one who proposed the dismissal before the general director, María Gámez, who accepted it.

The ex-colonel in chief appears implicated in both the Mediator case and the Cuarteles case. In the first of the investigations, Tienda has a telephone conversation with Espinosa in which both seem to be speaking in the code of people they do not identify, one of them described as “cousin” and the other as “el Luis”.

The general is the one who informs him that he is visiting Tenerife, that he has just met with the “cousin” and that he is “half drunk.” Tienda replies that he is with “el Luis”, who wants to have a meeting with Espinosa. He responds “that he calls Luis in twenty minutes on Colonel Tienda’s phone,” the agents noted in the letter. All talk is recorded by the plot mediator Marcos Antonio Navarro Tacorontewho accompanies the general in the car.

In this conversation, the ex-colonel in chief cites “the papers.” The investigators write in the summary: “Espinosa Navas receives a telephone call from Colonel Tienda, who tells him that his people are looking for the papers.” After this conversation, Espinosa and Navarro have a meal at the Hotel Escuela in which the former General Director of Livestock of the Government of the Canary Islands, Taishet Sourcesthe Castilian-Manchegan industrialist Antonio Bautista Prado, aka the Curita; and the Lanzarote builder Mon.

In the audio, the mediator speaks that the general “was happy”, to which a third person not identified in the summary adds that Espinosa is “the person most closely related to the issue of the Civil Guard, with the most friends… ». Mon boasts in this meeting that the former president of the Government of SpainJosé Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, was interested in buying one of the nine houses he owns.

The other investigation that brought down the chief colonel Tienda is related to the works of this builder from Lanzarote with the Civil Guard, who charged the Armed Institute for the work carried out despite the fact that some of them were not even carried out. The Santa Cruz de Tenerife Command was the one that signed the most contracts with Mon, which made 47 reforms for 927,499 euros.

The investigations carried out by Internal Affairs of the Civil Guard germinated by an anonymous message warning of irregularities in the contracts for minor works of certain barracks, all of them carried out by companies from Lanzarote. One of the command posts involved was Ávila and its colonel-in-chief at the time, Carlos Alonso Rodríguez, acknowledged that he was hiring Mon because “he was recommended by the Deputy Director General of Support of the Civil Guard, Lieutenant General Pedro Vázquez Jarava, as he was a businessman specializing in waterproofing facades and roofs who wanted to try a new product that would be recommendable”, the proceedings collect. “The deputy director was interested in testing what this waterproofing was like for future actions,” the researchers add.

To some of the works, the workers went without tools. The first corporal of the post in the town of Navarredonda de Gredos in Avila pointed out to Internal Affairs that “the workers who carried out the works showed up without any type of painting material, the first corporal himself helping them in the management for its acquisition in the area, as well as for the rental of machinery since I did not have any material to use ». This civil guard and the employees of the Canarian builder themselves agreed that “among the concepts invoiced and not executed is the waterproofing of the roof” of the barracks.

In the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, researchers confirm that ten of Mon’s works had not been carried out, including one for 22,500 euros belonging to a reform on the façade of the Santa Cruz de The Palm; and it is verified that in Playa de Santiago and La Laguna 70,859 euros were paid for works that were oversized.

The worst case since Roldán

The Unified Association of Civil Guards (AUGC) demanded on Friday from the general director of the Armed Institute “zero tolerance” with the corruption that is dirtying the image of the body, in addition to requesting that she “take real and forceful measures.”

such as those carried out in the Command of Tenerife ». In a statement, the association showed its “extreme concern” about the operations that have been known in recent times, among which it added the investigation opened in Valencia for the award of works and service contracts from the command.