“Madam Prosecutor, I have been trying to be heard for four years, I apologize if my explanations are broad.” This phrase from the mayor of Badalona, Xavier García Albiol, helps to understand his statement as a defendant this Monday in the trial for the illegal antennas in Badalona. For almost an hour, Albiol has rejected any responsibility in the case and has even complained, ironically, about the “examination questions” that, in his opinion, the prosecutor has asked him.
It was not an exam but an interrogation of almost an hour in a criminal trial in which Albiol risks disqualification. However, after two weeks of hearing, which will conclude this Wednesday with the parties’ reports, the atmosphere is one of optimism among the defenses in the case. Beforehand, the Prosecutor’s Office will have to say whether it maintains or reduces the request of two years and ten months in prison and another ten months of disqualification for Albiol for a crime of prevarication.
Along with the current 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. , for the unlicensed installation of two telephone antennas on municipal land in 2012. The antennas were not removed until 2018.
The Prosecutor’s Office accuses Albiol because, in his first stage as mayor, he maintained the powers in Urban Planning without delegating them to a councilor (as happened during the progressive government with Lladó, councilor of the former mayor Dolors Sabaté). In his statement, which lasted almost an hour, Albiol discharged himself of responsibilities in the case: “I was not involved in the legality control.”
Albiol did not like prosecutor Laura Ricart’s key questions. The prosecutor asked the mayor if the power to grant licenses was delegated to the municipal company Engestur or if it remained in the hands of the council, to which the mayor stated that this power “cannot be delegated to third parties.” Nor could it be delegated, he added, the capacity to sanction in matters of urban planning.
The prosecutor’s cross-examination about the sanctioning power has provoked a complaint from Albiol, who has considered the prosecutor’s questions “examination questions.” With more elegance, the president of the 5th section of the Barcelona Court, José María Assalit, reminded the prosecutor that the court was already “enlightened” about municipal powers. “Normally, the Law is the expression of common sense,” the magistrate added to redirect the interrogation.
“If I had to be aware of each of the actions carried out by each of the municipal societies that I preside over, I would not do anything else in the world,” said Albiol, who recalled that he also presides over the Badalona Hospital and does not know the day-to-day life of the center. “Pretending that the mayor of the third city of Catalonia knows the management movements of each of the municipal companies is impossible,” he added.
What’s more, Albiol has assured that he found out that the antennas existed in 2018, that is, six years later and the same year of their removal, when he saw a news item in the press about the matter in El Periódico de Catalunya. Albiol has not recalled the meeting in which representatives of the Guàrdia Urbana, on whose land the antennas were, warned him of their carcinogenic potential.
“If at that meeting I had found out that there was an irregularity, I would have acted,” stated the mayor, who also assured that he never saw anything problematic at the facility. “I don’t pay attention to whether there are no antennas or no cables, it is not part of my visual curiosity.” The trial will be heard for sentencing this Wednesday.
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