Dressed in sports clothes, dejected and tired, the mayor of Fines (Almería, 2,286 inhabitants), Rodrigo Sánchez, left the offices of Cars Rodrigo, one of the companies to which he is linked, at 6.26pm. this Tuesday. He did so with his face half-covered and accompanied by three officers from the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard, who placed him in the back seats of a vehicle headed to the Almería Command, more than an hour away. He is one of seven arrested for acts of the armed institute declared secret and linked to alleged illegal hiring, including Javier Aureliano García, president of the Provincial Council, both from the People’s Party. The trip was the culmination of a long day that began early with the registration of his home in the city by the same team who, in the late afternoon, were still at the vehicle sales and rental company’s facilities. The judge investigating the case believes that there are “well-founded suspicions about the commission of facts that could constitute a crime of corruption, misappropriation of public funds and money laundering”, according to his order.
The morning began with a surprise for the inhabitants of the town of Almeria, surrounded by marble quarries and located in the heart of the Almanzora Valley region. Early in the morning, a Guardia Civil car parked in front of the apartment where the councilor lives. Nobody knew what was happening, but everyone suspected it was something important because there was even a dog unit present. And then the news spread like wildfire: the mayor had been arrested.
The arrest has become the topic of the day for the inhabitants of this municipality. “Everyone is talking about it,” Imad acknowledged from across the Madrid café-bar located across from City Hall. “I’ve heard everything, because there are people who are very in favor and others, less so, against. But I’ve only been here for four years and I really don’t know what to think”, explained the employee of a humble and dark canteen where some fish were swimming unaware of everything in a bright aquarium.
The whole city seems to be under construction. In mid-afternoon, among the deserted streets, you could just hear the sound of the radio of the bricklayers engaged in municipal work and, in the distance, the dominoes with which a group of pensioners were playing on the upper floor of the pensioner’s house, in front of the Javier Aureliano García auditorium. The space was inaugurated in 2021 and is named after the political leader arrested this Tuesday, in charge of its inauguration. It was built with funds from the Provincial Council by the Tigilis company, which was also included in the calculation. “The mayor has done just this: many jobs. The whole city has changed”, they explain. They gave as an example the streets that are being renovated these days, but also the greenway, the stage space or the town hall building itself, inaugurated in 2014 based on marble, among others.
“That they took him into custody was a surprise”, they explained between silences, averted glances and little desire to talk about the city councilor since 2003, strong leader of the Almería PP, suspended from militancy this Tuesday.
Other neighbors admitted that the Sánchez family’s problems with the law have been repeated in recent years. The mayor’s son, also Rodrigo Sánchez, had already had a case in 2009 and another in 2014 in which he was sentenced to 21 months in prison together with his sister for building without a license an annex to his house and a swimming pool on one of his properties, although he was later acquitted by the Almería court.
In 2021 he was arrested again by the Guardia Civil in the operation that gave rise to this second arrest of the mayor, and which also overturned the fines. Then the officers – who also arrested the mayor’s nephew, Óscar Liria, then third vice-president of the Provincial Council of Almería – searched houses and businesses in the so-called Case of masks. T Both Liria and the mayor’s son were caught with wads of cash. The latter is another of the seven detained today by the UCO.
Mules is the starting point and family epicenter of the mask conspiracy and the network of companies that obtained allegedly fraudulent prizes through the Provincial Council of Almería. The winner of the medical equipment, Kilian López, is well known in the city where he spent summers as a child. In fact, his aunt, Hortensia López Moreno, also investigated in the case, is the former sister-in-law of the mayor of Fines and sole director of the Comercial del Seguro del Almanzora SL, a company of which the councilor was director until 2017. Sánchez’s nephews, Óscar and Francisco Liria, are also investigated in the case, the latter for having used front companies to launder the money obtained from the bites. of masks.
Then the law of silence was imposed, the same one that exists today among many neighbors. Most look away when they see strangers passing by and rarely answer questions about what happened. “It’s a very small thing and it’s better not to talk about it,” many responded. Only Mariana, a woman who took the mayor to court over a family dispute 20 years ago, dares to celebrate his arrest and ask many questions about why this didn’t happen sooner. “Where does his wealth come from?” he wondered. “He is one of those open people, with great character, who tries to convince you of everything and who does you a favor without thinking about it. But then, when you least expect it, he burdens you with it three times,” he observed.
Another neighbor, who didn’t want to give his name or be seen talking to a reporter, insisted on the same idea, almost hidden inside his car and with the window half closed. “It is not understandable that they continued to vote for him so many times, but people do it out of fear. Here, either you are in their favor or they ban you,” he underlined. “This is a shame for the people,” he underlined, very upset.
“The truth is that we have no idea what happened. Of course we found out because this morning there was a lot of Guardia Civil, but we can’t say more because we don’t know,” said Martín Oller, a young teacher at the municipal music school during a band rehearsal. metalhead Goreleech, consisting of a 17 year old boy and a girl. His hoarse voice, his guitar and the powerful drums of the teacher reached the offices of Cars Rodrigo, where throughout the afternoon the UCO agents opened folders, examined documentation, examined invoices and consulted the contents of the computers, always in the presence of the mayor until his transfer to the office. His lawyer was also there, in a suit and tie, always on the phone. In addition to closely following the searches, he also observed police officers taking away from the offices a handful of hunting rifles, which they kept in the trunk of the vehicle taking Sánchez to Almería.
Around eight in the afternoon, a cold and closed night in Fines, the only illuminated place in Via Madrid were the Rodrigo Cars factories, where the agents continued here and there or went out to smoke a cigarette to take a break. Their faces showed the fatigue of a long, difficult and strange day in a city that prefers to remain silent.
