Double trouble

Yesterday the Popular Party of Bigastro announced that the socialist mayor Jose Joaquin Moya is currently being imputed with two denunciations in the courts of Orihuela.

Court Number 1 of Orihuela is investigating the presumed irregularities in the administrative transaction of the Special Plan for The Pedrera. This is for a project including an aparthotel and golf practice courses on 80,000 m2 of rustic ground. The company concerned paid the Municipality 3.5million euros for the land and licences. This project been suspended by the Generalitat in Valencia because the reclassification of the land had not been approved by the autonomic administration.

In Court Number 4 of Orihuela they are investigating presumed crimes of embezzlement. The claim is that municipal resources are being used to construct a rural hotel in the neighbouring town of Jacarilla. In the same denunciation, presented in 2007 by the PP and Los Verdes in the Anti-corruption Office of the public prosecutor, it appears the concession to operate a solar farm was given to a " relative " of the Mayor. The same "relative" was given authorization to build a plant to assemble solar panels on land which was deemed non-industrial.

The mayor of Bigastro, Jose Joaquin Moya, said yesterday that he did not know the judicial imputations. Moya added that, in the case of the judicial investigation of the special plan for the Pedrera, the court had asked for information from the City council which has been provided.

Between smiles, the Mayor asked what "autoridad moral tienen esa panda de chorizos para pedir que se me apliquen los estatutos del PSOE" (lit. what moral authority has that bunch of sausages to request that the statutes of the PSOE are applied to me). Perhaps, Moya added, the spokesman of the PP Aurelio Murcia " knows them well because up to three months before the elections he wanted to head the list of the PSOE ".

The local secretary of the PSPV-PSOE, Marylene Albentosa, said yesterday that the Socialists have been " honest ". She said the PP should consider the judicial situation of many of the other mayors in the region and the province.

For example, the ex- mayor of Catral, Jose Manuel Loyal Rodriguez, who had been involved in the illegal house scandal in Catral, resigned from the PSOE months before the municipal elections to stand as an independent.

So the war of words continues. The looser's in all this may well be the Town and its citizens.

NB a bunch of sausages is a Spainish metaphor for a pack of thieves.