Several witnesses have testified in the trial of the mayor of Badalona (Badalona), Xavier Garcia Albiol, that the telephone companies that installed mobile antennas without a license on some land in the city tried to regularize the situation, although they collided with municipal inaction.
A new session of Albiol’s trial has been held before the 5th section of the Barcelona Court, where the Prosecutor’s Office requests two years and ten months in prison for him and another ten months of disqualification for a crime of prevarication. Along with the mayor, his former Security councilor Miguel Jurado, now a PP councilor in Santa Coloma de Gramenet (Barcelona), two former City Council managers and the Urban Planning councilor of the left-wing government of Badalona, Oriol Lladó, sit on the bench.
The companies Vodafone and Movistar are also accused, as civil liability companies for profit. The prosecution maintains that the current mayor of Badalona and the rest of the accused allowed the installation of mobile phone antennas in the Urban Police offices between 2012 and 2018 without the corresponding licenses. The accused will testify next Monday or Tuesday.
In this Thursday’s session, the witnesses who appeared highlighted that there was the will of both the City Council and the companies to unblock the situation, reports the Catalan News Agency (ACN). However, after not receiving any municipal response, the operators decided to directly dismantle the antennas. Witnesses have denied that there were political instructions not to sanction the companies.
The former head of the Badalona Urban Guard Conrado Fernández explained that the unions had expressed their concern about the presence of telephone antennas in the police station. When he learned that there was no contract to have them in that space, the police leader activated the mechanisms to block access to the companies’ technical personnel.
“I gave the order that until it was clarified, no one would come in to modify the power of the antennas. They even called us from El Prat Airport once because they interfered with the landing of planes,” he told the court. The technicians only entered the premises again to dismantle the antennas.
Employees of the Vodafone firm also declared this Tuesday, indicating what the relationship was like with the City Council to address the operation and maintenance of the antennas through two meetings.
In the last one, in May 2018, already under the left-wing government, the person responsible for the organization of the company’s infrastructure and the person responsible for the deployment team in the metropolitan area participated, who have reported that at no time was any situation transferred to them. of impasse that urged dismantling.
However, two months after the meeting a decision was made. “Since we were not given any response, my recommendation was to dismantle the antenna,” explained the technician, an action that was carried out within the usual time frame, one to two months after making the decision.
In his statement, the former manager of the municipal company Engestur explained that he received complaints from the unions about the possible impact of the antennas. The MSR company, which assumed management, informed him that the elements lacked the corresponding permits for use in public spaces, and that the radiation parameters were within the established limits.
Subsequently, he said that a meeting was held with different representatives of the City Council department and the companies, in which they offered scenarios that they had already experienced in other Catalan towns to regularize the situation, admitting that “things were not starting” and that There was a will on all sides to resolve it.
For his part, the then head of Services, Security, Coexistence and Municipal Participation has highlighted that despite the desire to unblock the situation, he was not able to justify authorization for staff access to the police station facilities. This meant that no one from the companies had access by order of the police chief, until the moment of their withdrawal.
The last to testify this Thursday was the head of Service and Discipline of the council, who has assured that at no time did he receive instructions to initiate a sanctioning process for the location of the antennas, but that he also did not receive any instructions so that he would not do so in case that it was his obligation.
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