Two former mayors and a former Security councilor were convicted in 2011 of the crime of reckless homicide as a result of the death of a British couple in a flood that affected a flood-prone area in Finestrat, a town in the Marina Baixa region of Alicante, where there were installed a municipal market. This is the former socialist mayor José Miguel Llorca; of his PP successor, Honorato Algado, and of the former popular Security Councilor Tomás Gaspar Sellés Llorca.
The Alicante Provincial Prosecutor’s Office initially requested a four-year prison sentence for each of the three defendants for two crimes of homicide due to serious recklessness, another of injuries and a crime of damage. However, the two former mayors and the former mayor reached an agreement with the Public Ministry, which reduced the sentencing request to fines of 5,400 euros for two crimes of less serious reckless homicide, in application of a legal reform in 2015. The The head of the Criminal Court number 1 of Benidorm issued the ruling ‘in voce’, which subsidiarily condemned the Finestrat City Council and the insurance company. to pay the outstanding debt of 1,000 euros for civil liability.
The events date back to October 21, 2011, when a strong waterspout hit the Cala de Finestrat and caused a flood in the ravine that swept away the hundred stalls of the municipal market, the merchants’ vehicles and all of its infrastructure. A British couple—Kenneth and Mary Hall—died after being swept away by the force of the water. In addition, two other people were injured.
José Miguel Llorca, socialist mayor of the municipality between 1983 and 2007, authorized in 1984 a municipal market in the middle of a public waterway owned by the State without the required administrative authorization from the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation (CHJ).
CHJ sanction
A company operated the market through an administrative concession until 2009, when the council itself, with the popular Honorato Algado as mayor, assumed management of the market, despite the fact that, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, “it continued to lack the corresponding authorization and to know “the risk of flooding in the event of rain in the aforementioned channel.”
This is the mayor of the PP who, between 2007 and 2015, preceded Juan Francisco Pérez Llorca, current first mayor of Finestrat and right-hand man of Carlos Mazón. Pérez Llorca is general secretary of the Valencian PP and popular spokesperson in the Valencian Courts.
Both mayors asphalted and paved the boulevard, thus preventing the infiltration of rain. In 2009, with Honorato Algado as mayor, the CHJ initiated sanctioning proceedings against the Fienstrat City Council for having developed the ravine. The council was fined and forced to restore the ravine to its original state.
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