The Murcia City Council will appear in the criminal proceedings opened in the Court for the Atalayas fire that killed 13 people two Sundays ago. The mayor, José Ballesta, announced it this Tuesday morning, indicating that it will be a decision that will be made this coming Friday at the Government Board. “The objective is that those who have responsibilities in this assume their legal, juridical, administrative and criminal consequences.”
Ballesta also emphasized that “those ultimately responsible” were those commercial companies “with stormy futures” that have changed business owners on several occasions, and that failed to comply with the law by not heeding the closure orders.
The mayor did not respond to whether there will be political responsibilities, in reference to any dismissal in the government team, stating that “you don’t have to ask me that question, maybe you have to ask it somewhere else.”
The mayor, in response to the publication in LA VERDAD of reports on the investigation of the fire, said that “we almost found out at the same time they were published.” He pointed out that the City Council has, from the beginning, managed the crisis “very complicated”, with 13 deaths, others missing, psychological care for family members… And that the management of the “post-crisis is not being very simple nor easy, because it has many edges.
He recalled that just 24 hours after the fire the municipal executive appeared before the public to explain the administrative situation of the premises (at which time the previous socialist Urban Planning councilor also appeared); and “our legal services who appeared that same morning in the City of Justice” to offer all the information they had to the investigating judge.
Ballesta also pointed out that on Monday an information file was opened, directed by the head of the Urban Planning service, “to gather and learn about all the files that were carried out in a period in which we did not have direct government responsibilities” in the City Council. .
Since then, he recalled, all closure files or unlicensed premises have been reviewed “and action has been taken on them.” And an action protocol has been opened regarding the granting of licenses for activities “to give them more traceability, security and agility.”
Social care
The mayor of Murcia highlighted that all this has been done while, simultaneously, maintaining psychosocial care for the relatives of the deceased, with help in the repatriation of three victims to Nicaragua.
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