The deputy mayor of El Toro, a town of 248 inhabitants located in the Castellón region of Alto Palancia, has been firmly convicted of a minor crime of threatening a neighbor with whom he has strong coexistence disputes. The second section of the Provincial Court of Castelló, in a ruling dated October 4 to which elDiario.es has had access, has confirmed the sentence of one month and 20 days of fine with a daily fee of seven euros imposed on Vicente Tudón , deputy mayor of the PP, the party that has governed El Toro for more than two decades.
The section of proven facts of the initial ruling of the Court of First Instance and Instruction number 1 of Segorbe reports that on March 7, neighbor Traian LT was threatened on a street in the municipality by the deputy mayor with expressions such as “you have hours left, Romanian” or “you are going to die.” All of this “with the intention of intimidating him.”
The PP councilor denied the facts in the oral trial held on March 27. Vicente Tudón declared that, on the day of the events, his neighbor placed a banner on the balcony “from where he laughed with a mocking laugh,” threatened him and told him that he was going to “throw him out of town.”
On the contrary, the sentence considers that it was not proven that Traian LT blurted out expressions to Vicente Tudón such as “I already gave your girlfriend, now it’s your turn” or that he made the gesture of slicing his throat. The deputy mayor acknowledged that “he became very nervous” and said to his neighbor “a lot of expletives that are not like him.”
Vicente Tudón also reported Traian LT for an alleged crime of minor threats. However, according to the ruling, Tudón’s statement “suffers from the requirement of persistence in the incrimination.”
The threatened neighbor was already convicted, for a minor crime of injuries, in a sentence dated March 9, 2021. There were proven “disagreements” between both neighbors, which is why the magistrate rejected the restraining order requested by Traian LT’s defense. (these are adjacent neighbors). “The reported acts have been sufficiently punished by the sentence imposed,” the ruling states.
The first instance ruling considers that Traian LT offered at trial the same version of the events that he reported to the Civil Guard, “without ambiguities or contradictions.” Furthermore, his version was “peripherally corroborated” by his spouse’s statement and by the recording that the man made with his cell phone in which the threatening expressions can be heard. “There is no doubt about the incriminating version held by the complainant about the expression complained of,” states the judge.
Vicente Tudón appealed his neighbor’s acquittal, alleging an alleged error in the evaluation of the evidence. However, the Provincial Court of Castelló has rejected the appeal of the deputy mayor of El Toro and has imposed costs on him, in a resolution against which there is no appeal.
While Traian LT’s version has “objective corroboration” from the video recorded with his mobile phone, Vicente Tudón’s “does not have any objective corroboration,” the ruling concludes.
The mayor defends his ‘number two’
The mayor of the town, the popular José Arenes, rejects the condemned man’s resignation and frames the events in a confrontation with a neighbor who “makes his life impossible.” “They have accumulated complaints long before these events,” says the first mayor in a telephone conversation with this newspaper. The mayor of El Toro also alludes to a previous attack by Traian LT on Vicente Tudón’s wife, for which he was convicted.
Furthermore, Arenes alleges that “the events occurred when he was neither deputy mayor nor councilman.” The sentence indicates that the threats were made on March 7.
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