José María García Urbano, mayor (PP) of Estepona (Málaga, 76,975 inhabitants), hired a person as an advisor or trusted position supposedly to review the cleanliness of the streets, the lighting of streetlights, the trash cans and the state of the pots that give luster to the city, at a rate of just over 3,600 euros per month and a total of 5,200 euros for the 48 days that he had it hired. It coincides that, at that time, that person had sexual encounters with the councilor and his own partner, a local police officer, according to what the latter reported to a court, which for three months has been trying to find out if these relationships were forced by García’s threats. Urban, as the complainants claim.
The mayor will appear this Monday before a court in Estepona, which is investigating if he embezzled by signing CPB as an advisor. According to sources of the procedure, she herself already told the judge that she did not work at all and did not even set foot in the city hall, which, on the other hand, says that she did perform common tasks. Two hours before he testified, in this case as a witness, CPB herself, a nursing assistant, who along with her then partner (a local police officer) is the alleged victim of the mayor’s sexual harassment.
Although the judge has separated the two cases, there is a line that unites them, the complete path of which the investigation must trace: why did García Urbano hire, paying more than 5,000 euros per month and a half of work, the woman he now claims to have supported? sexual relations with him under duress? Regardless of whether there was a sexual crime, is there embezzlement when paying public money to a person who lacked experience or training for the assigned tasks and who, according to her complaint, maintained a three-way relationship with the councilor? Is there one if she herself says that she did not work and there is no documentary evidence that she did?
The complaint of alleged sexual harassment already detailed payments, these supposedly personal, by García Urbano, who paid 2,000 euros per month to the couple in order for them both to spend as much time as possible in Estepona and found them a rental apartment in the Panorama building on Avenida de España, according to that story.
Last Friday, the provincial general secretary of the Malaga PSOE asked the PP to “remove” García Urbano. The mayor, who is accused in both cases, counterattacked with a note sent by the council, in which he maintains that everything is a setup that seeks to damage his public image for “spurious reasons.”
48 days hired as a position of trust
The judicial investigations into the figure of García Urbano, until recently a brilliant figure of the PP, are now facing their decisive phase. Both are being handled by the Court of Instruction 5 of Estepona, which began investigating a complaint from a local police officer who claimed to have been forced, along with his then partner (CPB), to participate in various sexual encounters with the councilor, who had threatened him with labor retaliation if he did not agree. Despite requests to file it, that case remains open after the statements of the local police officer, the woman and the mayor himself, and has been split into another case for embezzlement.
The opening of the second investigation has its origins in the CPB statement in that first case of alleged sexual harassment. It was there where the woman revealed that she had been registered as a position of trust by the councilor and assured that she never really worked for the council. She was signed three and a half months before the elections (when all positions of trust cease by law) and dismissed two months before the elections.
Following his words, the judge opened a separate investigation and required the city council to forward the entire contracting file, “as well as all those files in which it has intervened.” The separate investigation for embezzlement is opened ex officio by the judge, precisely to safeguard the privacy of the councilor (explicit videos have allegedly been provided in the case of alleged sexual harassment), and does not have its origin, therefore, in any complaint from the PSOE. , as the city council has assured in a letter to the media.
In the documentation that the council has provided to the court, to which this media has had access, all kinds of explanations are given, but there is actually no specific task carried out by CPB in the 48 days that it was paid for acting as “Advisor of the External Control and Strategic Projects area”, which is responsible for monitoring the “proper functioning” of outsourced public services. CPB had “special advisory and trust functions” and charged a total of 5,276.92 euros. The gross annual salary is more than 44,000 euros.
A position of trust for “tasks visible to the naked eye”
Among other documents, the council has sent the judge a letter signed by the councilor responsible for the area, Blas Ruzafa. The councilor says that in his area there is a team of four technicians, three administrative staff and an inspector (all labor personnel), but sometimes it has to be reinforced, and that for that reason the discretionary hiring of a position of trust and advice is used. He also assures that this type of personnel “does not usually manage administrative files”, so there would be no document that reflects their work.
“She was hired (…) to collect information on the state of street cleaning, lighting, landscaping and street furniture,” says Ruzafa, who writes that a nursing assistant who has no qualifications or experience in monitoring was hired. of public contracts because he was assigned “tasks that were visible to the naked eye and that did not require specific qualifications.”
The area headed by Ruzafa, a person García Urbano most trusts, manages and monitors million-dollar expenses. Estepona spent more than 44.6 million euros in 2023 for the private management of public services, according to the settlement of its Budget.
The municipality has outsourced everything that can be outsourced: street cleaning, waste treatment, beach cleaning and lifeguarding, gardening, park maintenance, street furniture, lighting, home help, road maintenance and signage, building maintenance and cleaning municipal and schools, water supply, sewage networks and the town’s two cemeteries.
The explanation given by the councilor is that to monitor compliance with these million-dollar contracts and its 500 workers, the city council hired an advisor as a position of trust and then assigned her common tasks.
In another report, this one from the Head of Human Resources, it is explained that there is also no entry and exit time record because, unlike work personnel, for the official (in this case temporary and trusted) “it is not strictly obligatory” to keep it.
The other option is that she was actually hired, but did nothing or went to the city council. That’s what she told the judge.
No Human Resources report or motivation
CPB was thus contracted from February 13 to March 30, 2023, 45 days, although she was paid the proportional part of her gross payroll (44,880 euros) corresponding to 48 days of work. Her hiring was on February 13: that day a report from the Head of Human Resources was prepared, the mayor signed the appointment decree and the interested party took office. However, the city council has not delivered the supposed Human Resources report, even though the judge requested the entire file.
Everything happened on the same day, February 13, although the PDF of the appointment has a peculiarity: it was modified subsequently, on May 14, according to its metadata. In Estepona, the hiring of positions of trust goes, by default, to the General Services area, although “exceptionally and motivatedly” they can be assigned to another area. However, this appointment did not include any motivation.
The cessation decree was signed digitally on March 12, just one month later, but its effects were deferred to March 31.
Both documents, appointment and dismissal, were incorporated into the Transparency portal in December 2024, almost two years after being signed.
Brief information to the Plenary
The power to appoint and dismiss positions of trust is discretionary and depends on the political position. Precisely for this reason, their tasks are ones of trust and advice, never ordinary or managerial, such as checking the cleanliness of the pavement or the state of the flower beds. “Only performs functions expressly classified as trust or special advice,” restricts the Public Employee Statute. Their appointment and dismissal is free, but that does not mean that it has no limits nor does it avoid judicial control of labor abuses or possible cases of prevarication or embezzlement.
Normally, their appointment occurs at the beginning of the mandate, but new hires can occur as long as the Plenary Session is informed and the limit is not exceeded. For the 2019-2023 term, the mayor of Estepona (who had 21 of 25 councillors) had the 14 positions of trust allowed by law, to which he paid around two million euros.
The mayor did not inform the Plenary of the appointment of CPB, but was questioned by the PSOE spokesperson, Emma Molina, in March 2023. García Urbano responded by invoking his discretion to appoint whoever he wants. Four years earlier, when he inaugurated his mandate, he had proclaimed with dignity that positions of trust “are professional and not political positions,” that they go to City Hall “to work, to help with files and to provide services.”
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