The kidnapping last Tuesday of Vanessa Romero, a socialist councilwoman from Maracena (Granada, population 22,000) by the current mayor’s ex-boyfriend, Berta Linares, also of the PSOE, has also become a political and municipal management issue. This Friday, the mayor instructed her staff to send all files in the area of urban planning from 2007 to the present to the public prosecutor’s office. He did so after the mayor linked his kidnapping to alleged municipal irregularities. The referral to the public ministry concerns the 15-year leadership of former mayor Noel López, who left office in 2022 to become organizational secretary of the Andalusian PSOE. It has also commissioned what it calls a “criminal investigation,” for which it has hired — or said it will do so — an outside legal team to examine these and other files and issue a report on whether or not they contain any illegalities. In the meantime, the service court will not clarify the situation of the detainee until this afternoon. The cause is explained secretly.
As part of the investigation, the city architect was summoned to appear before the criminal police on Thursday, as reported by Radio Granada Cadena SER and confirmed by this newspaper. In return, the researchers sent a request to the city council to “secure the files on intervention, secretariat and urban planning and contracting,” Maracena city council sources reported.
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According to sources familiar with the case, Romero had been driving documents in her car for weeks with data she believes support alleged irregularities in the city council. However, his relatives have said these days that he has no intention of filing a complaint with them. It was Tuesday’s events that got those papers into the hands of the Civil Guard, who are now investigating them to try to discover the reasons for what happened.
These relatives have also stated that the alleged irregularities do not relate exclusively to Linares’ tenure as mayor – from July 2022 until now – but to a period before that, when Noel López chaired the consistory. As part of the political aspect of these events, the Mayoress has convened an extraordinary plenary session for next Wednesday, April 1st. Actually, this is an application that the municipal faction of the PP had previously made.
Noel López has shown his composure about what might emerge from the analysis of these documents and reports Lourdes Lucio. “I have complete and absolute calm for the management of Maracena at this time and in mine. It was conscientious and transparent. There have been no issues over the years so there is nothing to rate and transfer. Let the judiciary do its job as soon as possible and let the state security forces and bodies investigate.” For López, mayor for more than 15 years and having won four elections, “Maracena has always acted with transparency and legality and therefore “There is no concern in the town planning or anything else. My concern is about what happened, about the kidnapping. I can’t explain it. It’s very surreal.” Instead he says, “I’m surprised and concerned for Vanesa and Berta. I was shocked by the kidnapping. It’s an unfortunate fact.” On the other hand, from the Andalusian PSOE they reported that López entrusted Secretary General Juan Espadas “with his absolute calm for his management and of course all the collaboration so that they investigate what needs to be investigated .”
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The Mayor of Maracena (Granada), Berta Linares (PSOE), during the press conference offered this Wednesday by Miguel Angel Molina (EFE)
Days after the event, evidence was already available that the mayor and city council received no treatment beyond what a good education requires. They greeted each other and little else, all sources have confirmed. Berta Linares, on the other hand, had already confirmed that she would not be on the lists for the next municipal elections on May 28 this year. Deputy spokesman for the government team, Antonio García Leiva, said in a statement that he understood “Romero’s nervousness about not being included on the lists, but that this is no excuse to question the work of so many years.”
Vanessa Romero was unlawfully arrested on Tuesday morning after leaving her children at the school, a center on the outskirts of the neighboring town of Atarfe. There Pedro Gómez, 44, asked him to take him to a gas station. Shortly after getting into her vehicle, she threatened with what turned out to be a fake gun and put a bridle on it. On hands and feet and mounted them in the trunk. From there they drove to Maracena, 20 kilometers away, where they parked the car at a place that Gómez had rented. He went back to Maracena to buy more supplies at a hardware store: a carving knife and a roll of duct tape. From there he returned to the place of detention in Armilla, but the councilor had already managed to get out of the car by kicking the back seats, and also the premises and would already be under the care of the police. Hours later, around five in the afternoon, the Guardia Civil arrested him in Maracena. Since then, the city council has testified up to three times.