For six years now, the battle between the Sant Antoni Chief of Police, Javier Verdugo, and Aída Alcaraz, former local government concejala has been going on. It began when the PSOE took over the Council’s reins and José Tur ‘Cires’ became mayor. The friction (more like ‘elbowing’, at times ‘stabbing’) did not cease throughout that whole term of office. Now we are witnessing the aftermath of that peculiar conflict (by judicial and dialectical means), which dominated Portmany’s political life during those four years: the consequences of Alcaraz being acquitted of the accusation of having harassed Verdugo at work, a judgement that was announced last week and that could still be appealed in the higher courts.
November 2015
It all started in November 2015, when the new government team (formed by PSOE-Reinicia) created a new temporary staff position, that of Technical Director of Security. Ángeles Gallardo Oliver was appointed to the role. Nobody knows if it was of his own accord (for fear that his power would diminish) or whether he was prompted by others (who feared he would lose his power), but Javier Verdugo did not take long to react. He immediately challenged the appointment as he believed that “it had the hidden purpose of supplanting or removing the figure of the Chief of the Policía Local,” of him, he argued. In fact, Verdugo complained in his appeal that, since taking office, the Director of Security had exercised the chief of police’s duties. He also complained that the creation of this position was “voidable due to having no justification” and because “the shortcoming [sic] that made it necesssary to provide the Concejala and Governance delegate [Aída Alcaraz] with an adviser” were not explained.
Initially, Verdugo won the argument. In November 2016, the judge in Palma’s Contentious-Administrative Court number 1 agreed with him and annulled the creation of that post. But the City Council appealed and almost a year later, in October 2017, the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands (TSJB) gave its approval for Gallardo to occupy the temporary position. The court understood that the Council had “corrected” the shortcomings identified in the appointment, that this was a “free designation”, that it had been properly “justified” in the file and that it was not necessary for the Government team to detail (as Verdugo requested) “with real data the volume of work that required the need for technical advice”. Nor was it necessary for Alcaraz to demonstrate “her inability to, on her own, provide answers in her field to questions that arose on a daily basis”, a request by the Chief of Police that the court considered “excessive”. It seemed more like a twisted way of calling the concejala useless.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.