The mayor of San Pedro interrupts the plenary session twice due to criticism from the opposition and the police

The local police, who already demonstrated in the previous session for the non-payment of overtime hours carried out since August 2021, protested again this Thursday with their presence in the plenary hall. To express their discomfort, the agents applauded each time an opposition spokesman called for the resignation of the Councilor for Security, Ángela Gaona, which tensed the atmosphere in the room. The mayor, Visitación Martínez, demanded that the police refrain from expressing “both signs of like and dislike, which are prohibited by regulation,” she says. With each request for the councilwoman’s dismissal, the agents applauded again until the mayor interrupted the plenary session. Upon resuming it, the agents clapped their hands again to claim Gaona’s resignation, when the councilor suspended the plenary session for the second time and announced that she would resume it behind closed doors, without an audience in the room.

In the second intermission, there was a confrontation in the corridor, next to the elevator, between the PSOE spokesman, José Lorenzo Martínez, and the mayor. “Thank you very much for helping me to the proper functioning of the Plenary,” says the socialist mayor who ironically reproached the mayor. “What you have done is undemocratic, suspending the plenary session twice when I had the use of the floor”, affirms José Lorenzo Martínez who answered him. According to the spokesperson for the PSOE and Ciudadanos, José Luis Ros, the mayor turned when she entered the elevator and called them “scoundrels.” “It is inadmissible, the bad manners and the insult, but above all it has restricted the freedom of expression of the police,” says the PSOE mayor. For her part, the mayor denies that she has uttered said insult.

Neither the councilors of the PSOE nor those of Cs returned to the Plenary Hall, as they had announced if it resumed behind closed doors. “We ask for the resignation of the mayor for her lack of self-criticism and her despotism, restricting the freedom of expression of the police and the opposition,” criticizes the socialist spokesman.

According to the orange spokesman, “it has been an illegitimate way of raising the plenary session, that is why we have not returned.” For Ros, “the problem with overtime is that they are distributed unevenly, benefiting only a few.” Opposition spokespersons criticize the low police presence on the streets, due to the conflict over the non-payment of overtime to the agents. “The quadrants are drawn up to comply with basic services, but it is another thing to comply with casualties,” says the mayor, who affirms that “agents work 7 days and rest another 7 days, with an average casualty rate of 20% Of the template”. He assures that they have already been paid for the overtime worked in the first quarter of this year, and next week they will hold a plenary session to pay them for those from August to October 2021. The police have called a demonstration on Monday at the door of the Consistory to claim your debt.