Two antennas placed without a license in Badalona will occupy the attention of the magistrates of section 5 of the Barcelona Court for two weeks. This Monday the trial for urban prevarication began, which sees several municipal officials from PP and left-wing governments in the dock, including the current mayor, Xavier García Albiol.
Despite the long duration of the trial, the question to be resolved is quite simple. Did Albiol and the other six accused municipal officials allow the installation of two telephone antennas illegally on a property reserved for cultural use? Albiol’s political career depends on the court’s answer to the question: the Prosecutor’s Office asks him for two years and ten months in prison and ten months of disqualification.
The defenses of the accused as well as those of Vodafone and Telefónica, who sit in the dock as those responsible for profit (beneficiaries) of the alleged municipal prevarication, deny the majority. At most, in his opinion, it would be an administrative matter, but in no way a criminal case.
To guarantee their right to defense, the accused have asked to testify at the end of the trial. Beforehand, the Mossos d’Esquadra in charge of the investigation, several officials and former councilors of Badalona will parade before the court to enlighten the court about the antennas, which were placed between 2012 and 2018. They will even appear as investigative experts from the Catalan Anti-Fraud Office (OAC). ) that estimated the irregular income of the council derived from the antennas at 17,448 euros.
Albiol’s line of defense, represented by Cristóbal Martell, involves disengaging from the “daily monitoring” of the installation of antennas as well as the specific processing of licenses due to his greater “political dedication” as mayor. The issue of the antennas, the defense argues, was “unattainable” due to the large volume of matters to be managed as mayor.
In his intervention in the processing of preliminary issues, Martell has provided several documents to support his thesis. Among them, the certificate that tens of thousands of people lived in Badalona at the time of the events and that the municipal staff was a thousand officials.
“There was no overwhelming clamor for the installation of antennas. In a municipality with 220,000 souls and 1,000 officials, certain extremes are beyond the control of the mayor’s office,” Martell alleged.
On the other hand, the Environmental Prosecutor’s Office maintains that Albiol, having jurisdiction in Urban Planning “and as the most responsible for the correct functioning” of the council, “allowed or authorized by de facto means and without ever issuing an express resolution” the installation of the two telephone antennas on municipal land.
He did so, adds the prosecutor, “despite knowing that that location was not urban-friendly to house that facility and that use, which prevented the granting of an express municipal environmental and urban license.”
In statements to the media before entering the Palace of Justice in Barcelona, Albiol was confident in the outcome of the hearing: “The trial will have something positive and that is that once and for all it will become clear what happened and what “It didn’t happen and each of you can draw conclusions.”
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