The former councilor of the Cabildo and former general secretary of the PSOE in Lanzarote, Carlos Espino, sent a letter this Wednesday to the federal leadership of the party requesting his suspension as a member after the latest order issued by Judge Rafael Lis, which closes the investigation of a case against him and initiates the procedure to bring him to trial along with four other people, for the granting of the territorial qualification to a gas station in 2008.
"I have full confidence that this order will be annulled in a few days. However, I am aware that our rules establish that you cannot be a member of the party in the personal circumstances in which I find myself, so I request, much to my regret, to be suspended from membership", Espino points out in that letter addressed to the Federal Department of Affiliation and Censuses of the PSOE, in which he explains that he currently does not hold "any position, either public or organic", so his request "will not generate any other additional problem".
In addition, he insists that he trusts "to be able to request sooner rather than later that" his "status as a member" be reactivated, thus announcing his intention to appeal this order from Judge Lis, which was notified to him this Wednesday, hours before he sent this letter to the party requesting his suspension of membership.
An association "created to hinder procedures" that he denounced
In his letter, Espino explains that the order to initiate the Abbreviated Procedure against him "derives from preliminary proceedings followed at the request of the so-called Jiménez de Asúa Association of Jurists", of which he states that "it has been created to hinder different judicial procedures derived from certain complaints" filed by him years ago. In this regard, he adds that "this personal opinion" about the association that denounced him "is supported by the resolutions of different courts that have expelled the aforementioned association from many of those procedures, applying very harsh qualifiers to them", such as the one used by the Prosecutor's Office when comparing it to a "Trojan horse with illegitimate interests".
However, the former councilor regrets that this association has "found a special welcome from the judge who is handling this procedure" and who has decided to initiate the procedure to bring him to trial against the criteria of the Public Prosecutor's Office, which in January asked that the case be dismissed for not seeing evidence of a crime. "Despite my enormous respect for our judicial system, I cannot help but show my astonishment at the resolution now issued, given that it is in direct contradiction with the position of the Prosecutor's Office, which requests the dismissal", Espino underlines.
In addition, he adds that "the circumstances in which" that order "was issued cause at least distrust", since "the resolution is dated last Sunday, April 29, something that is not accidental, since the judge who signs it must leave his court on May 2, after being sanctioned with six months" of suspension from employment and salary, "precisely for actions related to the aforementioned Association, for the benefit of some of the people" he himself denounced.
