The former mayor of Yaiza, José Francisco Reyes, refused to answer in his statement last week before Court number 2 of Arrecife who or who had decided in the City Council to apply the doctrine of not communicating to the Cabildo of Lanzarote the licenses granted to hotels, as was required.
The City Council of Yaiza, and also that of Teguise, decided from 1998 to stop requesting the compatibility report of the licenses with the Island Planning Plan (PIO), a key decision to hide from the Cabildo the licenses granted and to be able to build without the brake of the Moratorium and the PIO.
José Francisco Reyes stated in his last statement, last week, that the licenses were not hidden from the Cabildo but that it was considered that they did not have to be sent. He pointed out that "there was doubt" and it was resolved, and that the technicians and jurists would have that doubt, that it was not his because he has no legal knowledge. The statement literally states that the former mayor "does not want to answer regarding the identity of the person or persons who had doubts about whether or not to send the licenses to the Cabildo."
Regarding who made the decision to stop requesting the compatibility report, the former municipal secretary, Vicente Bartolomé Fuentes, stated in court that it was a position based on an opinion commissioned to Antonio Domínguez Vila, professor of Constitutional Law at the University of La Laguna.
In the previous statement of the former mayor, in June 2007, Felipe Fernández Camero, who was acting as his lawyer, contributed that document to the procedure but Reyes said that he was unaware of the content of that and other documents and that even if he read them he would not understand them. He also said, regarding the opinion of Domínguez Vila, that on occasions he had asked external lawyers verbally and/or in writing to inform him about the suspension of licenses.
The mayor assumes it
For his part, the secretary, in this aspect, pointed out that the City Council had a legal position based on said opinion that understood that said communication was not necessary, although he clarifies that this does not mean that the opinion says that communication of the licenses to the Cabildo is not necessary. According to Fuentes, the mayor was the one who assumed the opinion and the legal position when submitting the reports.
Fuentes said that he believed that the mayor commissioned the opinion but that he did not tell him that he was going to request it and that he does not know where that legal idea came from, but not from him. He even points out that the former mayor received communications (such as delivering the licenses to the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands) that he did not make him aware of.
The lawyer Felipe Fernández Camero, who has stopped representing José Francisco Reyes, is also charged in this case, and the judge has agreed to postpone his statement until his appeal for reform against that charge is resolved and until the Yaiza City Council delivers all the documentation regarding him that the Court is claiming.
Unemployed
Finally, the former mayor of Yaiza, who also refused to answer questions from the lawyer of the private prosecution, declared that he is currently collecting unemployment benefits for a year, since a motion of censure against him in the City Council prospered, and that he receives about "a thousand euros and change" of benefit.
ACN Press
