Former head of the local police of El Puerto, Rafael Muñoz Leonisio, leaving the court on January 17, 2024. Pedro Payán
Rafael Muñoz Leonisio never stopped smoking cigarillos in his office. He did not pass the anti-tobacco law. One could say that few regulatory frameworks of the current democracy have managed this: he drove his car without insurance, he cut down part of a pine forest without permission to build some paddle tennis courts, he used the municipal tow truck to take decommissioned cars there He used his networks to compulsively insult members of government and the left in general. The curious thing is that Muñoz was able to easily combine this professional life with his position as mayor and head of the local police of El Puerto de Santa María for almost 40 years. It was only after his retirement that he was arrested and accused of collecting bribes to manage city parking lots.
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Extortion, bribery, embezzlement of public funds for personal use and influence peddling: the list of suspected corruptions for which the Economic and Fiscal Crimes Unit (UDEF) of the National Police in Cadiz arrested Muñoz Leonisio last Tuesday is long. And that only refers to alleged legal violations he committed in his final year before retiring last November when he turned 65. With this, he considered José Manuel CR, a technician in the municipal infrastructure sector, as a necessary contributor to bribery offenses and prohibited negotiations with officials, according to the first phases of the investigation guided by Court Order No. 2 El Puerto. Instances of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office of Cadiz.
UDEF investigators believe that the former police chief used his position to collect illegal kickbacks from companies that last year took control of the temporary parking spaces created for festive events such as the trade fair or the Puro Latino music festival became. “It's not a lot of money because these weren't long awards, we're talking about a few thousand euros,” says a source familiar with the investigation. Muñoz Leonisio also allegedly used his powers to broker the cancellation of fines from family and friends and intervened so that his son could take advantage of a tourist train that had been operating for a few weeks in the summer of 2023. Added to this is the alleged use of the city crane “for private purposes,” as the same source explains. EL PAÍS has unsuccessfully attempted to contact the lead investigator to obtain his version of events.
Few in the city council were surprised by Muñoz Leonisio's arrest, although there were also few who had dared to denounce his alleged excesses during his more than three long decades of service. And the anecdote is so long that it is difficult to describe it. One official recalls the constant visits to his office by businessmen who, at the door of the headquarters, “started saying that he owed them money.” The socialist Ángel González, councilor for citizen security between 2015 and 2019, remembers how he had to be reprimanded for using his company phone to advertise a training academy for opponents of the local police and for driving a private car without insurance, which he later owned exchanged for a communal one. . “The badge was a shield for him. They were very afraid of him […] There were people who said that his hair would fall out after retirement,” notes the same worker.
The former head of the local police, arrested this Tuesday for bribery, Rafael Muñoz Leonisio (sixth from the right), poses next to the mayor of El Puerto de Santa María in an archive photo.El Puerto de Santa María town hall
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When Muñoz Leonisio took over as mayor of the local police force of El Puerto in the early 1990s – after being a lieutenant in the Marines until 1984 – it was sold as a “revolution,” explains the same source. Friendly and pleasant at short distances, the magic lasted until the first problems arose. At a New Year's Eve cotillion party in 2000 that was plagued by irregularities, he was finally identified as the agent who allegedly turned a blind eye to the riots at the site, although the investigation remained inconclusive, according to Diario de Cádiz. Six years later, he was denounced by environmentalists for destroying some pine trees without permission to build paddle tennis courts with a businessman friend, as one of the activists involved recalls. After this performance, at headquarters he received the nickname Rancapino (like the flamenco singer), which he added to his pseudonym together with Pringue due to his fondness for gel.
Not even his trips with the crane are new. In 2011, he had a city councilor pick up his vehicle from the city depot without paying the appropriate fee after he parked illegally. He claimed he was the authority. He did it twice more during the pandemic, in this case with cars belonging to another local police officer and a civil guard. “He told the tow truck to take the car out and bring it to the owner’s door,” the employee explains. As a result of these events, the UPLBA Local Authorities Union has reported him in a case that is also being investigated by Court No. 2. It was precisely this union that gave Muñoz Leonisio the most headaches – it also administratively condemned his urge to smoke cigarillos – the leadership. In return, the boss brought charges against twelve of his workers who had supported the union's protest by refusing to work because of the lack of pants, a dispute that the police eventually won in court.
But it was only in the years of the coronavirus and the mask that Muñoz Leonisio, dissatisfied with the management of the pandemic, came to the fore at the national level in May 2020 for insulting the government – he called the minister a “daughter”. a bitch.” María Jesús Montero or “shitty communist” for Pablo Iglesias – in their social networks. He demonstrated with a pot and the Spanish flag at the ready and was one of the 200 retired soldiers who signed the controversial manifesto against the executive power. At that point, he was already authorized chief of the local police force after the mayor's death in 2017 inadvertently cleared the way for him. The automatic promotion was so sudden that after weeks of absence from headquarters in early 2018, a rumor spread among his subordinates that he was on leave out of fear. He solved the mystery with an email he sent to staff in April of that year, in which he boastfully denied the major: “I continue to smoke my cigars, drink my Ribera del Duero (two glasses a day) and a few gins.” and tonic Rives Special when I go out on Sundays…”.
Now that he is retired, free and under investigation, many on the city council are wondering how he managed to get out of so much trouble after decades and six mayors of varying political stripes. “It has always been in motion, but the problem is that in our case we never had any evidence, it was just rumors,” apologizes González. The current PP government prefers to remain silent, although it remembers that they were the ones who removed him as chief after they managed to obtain a new, vacant position of local police mayor, effective in February 2022 was occupied. Although Javier Botella, from the local party Unión Portuense, Mayor Germán Beardo recalls “the closeness” and “the agreement” that Muñoz Leonisio – an avowed PP sympathizer – always had with the current local government. With political strife intensifying and legal investigations that could result in even more defendants, the municipal worker who treated him perhaps best summed up how Rafael Muñoz Leonisio survived: “He moves very well in the mud.”
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