The president of Andalusia and the regional PP, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, was forced to take over the reins of the PP of Almería, decreeing the suspension of the militancy of those involved in the case masks in Almería, which led to his resignation, which is unusual in a province that has tended to function like a kingdom of taifas since 1995, when he took over the provincial government. “When the judicial system started the process, in principle, based on information about open court proceedings, there was no case.” This is how Moreno justified his party’s inertia in the first case masks which was known in Spain and exploded on June 15, 2021 with the arrest of the third vice-president of the Provincial Council of Almería, Óscar Liria, for the alleged collection of bribes between 200,000 and 400,000 euros for an assignment of medical supplies worth two million euros signed in full confinement.
Four years later, this apparently baseless lawsuit for the popular leader, led to the arrest this week of the president of the supra-municipal entity and president of the all-powerful PP of Almería, Javier Aureliano García, of his first vice-president and right-hand man, Fernando Giménez, and of the mayor of Fines since 2003, Rodrigo Sánchez Simón, who were released, but accused of corruption, embezzlement of public funds, money laundering, trafficking of influences and corruption in public procurement.
“We knew nothing. Óscar Liria was expelled and the information we had was that the investigation had been channeled and would not have ended in nothing. All we reported was that the case of the masks had proceeded normally”, Almería PP sources told the newspaper about the lack of response to this corruption investigation. Despite this, since the case broke out, the mayor of Multe and the number two of the Provincial Council are accused; The president of the entity himself declared before the Guardia Civil that he is investigating the case in March 2022; In April last year the judge expanded the investigation to include contracts awarded by the provincial body between 2017 and 2021 and all those involved in the conspiracy until then testified before the judge between March and April this year. Moreno himself was reminded of this alleged case of corruption up to five times – four by Por Andalucía and one by the Andalusian PSOE – in government control sessions in Parliament, all between June 2021, when the scandal broke, and February and March 2022, months before the regional elections won by the PP with an absolute majority. He didn’t delve too deeply into any of them.
The Prime Minister this week also cited other reasons, in addition to alleged ignorance of the scope of the case, to justify his “surprise and amazement” at the arrests at the top of the Provincial Council. “They belong to a young generation,” Moreno argued about García and Giménez, both under 50, to encourage his amazement at this type of profile – “he has no family responsibilities, he is single and comes from a family that has no economic problems,” regarding the former; “a person closely linked to religious movements”, according to the second – was linked to corruption.
“This generation is not a separate period. They are the same PPs as always in Almería and they act in the same way”, explains an interlocutor who knows the management of training at the helm of the Provincial Council of Almería and the City Council of the capital – where García joined as councilor in 2003 -, for more than two decades, when Gabriel Amat, mayor of Roquetas de Mar since 1995, governed the Provincial Council. It is under the direction of Amat, leading this entity first (between 2011 and December 2019) and then the Almería PP (between 2004 and 2021), that the party becomes a machine for winning elections.
This political anomaly and the influence exercised by the management of the Provincial Council in a territory with just a hundred municipalities, most of which are very small and economically dependent on that supra-local entity, have made Amat one of the people with greater power and authority not only in the province, but in the party, beyond Andalusia. “There is no national or regional leader who, to do something in Almería, does not first have to obtain the approval of Amat,” says the same interlocutor. “In the Provincial Council a role does not move if the head does not control it. This happened before and also happens now”, he adds.
The influence of Gabriel Amat
From the Andalusian PP, this hierarchical preponderance of the Roquetas councilor is justified by appealing to the fact that it was Amat, at the request of Javier Arenas, senator and honorary president of the Andalusian PP, who reunified a party divided into three: the GIAL (Independent Group of Almería) led by Juan Megino; the PAL (Almería Party) of Juan Enciso, former mayor of El Ejido; and the PP—. “It was a tidal wave and since it has been there, the PP has not stopped winning elections,” say party sources in Almería.
“Him case masks It’s the tip of the iceberg of a modus operandi something that the Provincial Council has been doing since it has been governed by the PP”, says Luis Montoya, member of the Mediterranean Anti-Corruption and Transparency Association (Amayat), one of the main promoters of many of the investigations conducted in recent years which have put the spotlight on the Provincial Council and alleged irregular financing of the party, the evidence of which was collected by the Udef, despite the majority remaining firm or being dismissed. Amat was never questioned by the leadership of his party despite all the court cases in which he was surrounded: 260 trials, as he himself acknowledged in an interview to ABC this summer. “One for each person or company. All archived. Stripped of everything,” he boasted.
The PP leadership clings to this absence of charges to justify that there was never an attempt to remove him from the chair. “It’s not that he has the presumption of innocence, it’s that he justifies it by saying that he is innocent,” say the sources consulted. But this inertia could be reversed because the second phase of case masks It dates back to the appointments of the Provincial Council in 2016, when Amat was its president.
“Amat was the older brother of Javier Arenas and is the political father of Javier Aureliano García. He adopted him wildly and learned very quickly,” says another source who knows the internal relations of the Andalusian PP and who also agrees that with the arrival of García as president of the PP of Almería and of the Provincial Council, the way of exercising power and relations with city councils and businesses have not changed. When the mayor of Roquetas took over the reins of the party in 2005, he appointed García – who had been a councilor in the municipality of Almería for two years – deputy secretary and three years later promoted him to secretary general. Having reached the Provincial Council, he was appointed its first vice-president and is the one who will succeed him in the role when he leaves this position in 2019.
García assumed the presidency of the Almería PP – of which Amat is honorary president – at the end of June 2021, a few weeks after the outbreak of the case masks. In this period the popular ones, like Amat, won all the elections that took place and all with results above the regional average. “As long as Amat lives, Aureliano García will be protected,” so the popular people of Almería took for granted. Until now. The resignation of the former president of the Provincial Council is presented by the leadership of the Andalusian party as a roadmap to follow: “It marks a path from which the party will not exit”, say the sources consulted.
