The case of the kidnapping of a councilwoman in Maracena (Granada) has a new judicial derivative since this Friday. The Investigating Court Number 5 of Granada has opened proceedings for an alleged urban plot in the town of 22,390 inhabitants) in relation to the approval of a gas station by the City Council. The kidnapped councilor, Vanessa Romero, insisted on several occasions that she was going to make public that the City Council approved the establishment without it having all the necessary documentation, a point shared by the opposition forces and denied by a Councilor from the City Council.
According to the opposition parties, the gas station, recently opened in an area close to the Granada ring road and almost on the border with the capital, does not have all the necessary permits. The opposition formations accuse the government team that, despite this, the mayoress allowed its construction and opening.
Vanessa Romero was abducted on February 21 in her vehicle, allegedly by Pedro Gómez, who was then a partner of the mayoress of Maracena, Berta Linares. According to Romero’s account, at the time of the kidnapping she had in the vehicle documentation on the approval of the gas station, located next to the municipal border of the town with the capital.
From what the alleged kidnapper declared before the judge and has also been recognized by the mayoress, despite being part of the same Executive, the relationship between her and Romero was scarce and tense. Linares had removed Romero from the electoral lists for the municipal ones. The tension between the two was aggravated by, presumably, the fear that Romero would make public what for her was a case of alleged urban irregularity in the processing of the gas station.
The alleged kidnapper, who according to his ex-partner suffers from a mental illness, declared before the judge that his objective in retaining Romero was to “give a scare” to the councilwoman so that she would stop threatening Linares with airing the matter of the establishment. After the kidnapping, Gómez was arrested and remains in prison, charged with illegal retention.
After the secrecy of the case summary was lifted last Friday, three months after the facts, the investigation has derived into three branches: that of the urban plot, that of the kidnapping itself and the petition to the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia to to investigate Berta Linares, her Town Planning councilor Antonio García Leyva and, the previous mayor, regional deputy and since this Wednesday ex Number Three of the Andalusian PSOE.
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A member of the government team points out that the processing of the gas station did have all the required documents, but that the councilor Vanessa Romero did not have them. The documentation, according to this councilor, who asks not to reveal her identity, “is not all in the folder she has [Romero]” and that “there are other folders” where, according to his testimony, he holds the rest of the papers.
From the Maracena City Council, the mayoress has acknowledged in a statement issued mid-afternoon this Friday that the judicial police had already informed her of the opening of this investigation for this alleged urban irregularity. According to this statement, “the new proceedings will focus on determining whether there are signs of legal fraud in the files that will be investigated.” Berta Linares has expressed her “full collaboration to quickly clarify the facts.” She also added: “We are working diligently to provide all the necessary documentation and to verify the different information.”
The mayoress has also stated: “This matter could have been clarified long before or, in any case, after the elections” and thus not make a parallel trial before public opinion. Linares has concluded: “It is important to remember that until now only the defendant’s version has been presented”, which is the one included in the summary, and added that this “has been shown to be false”.
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