The mayor of Arrecife, Cándido Reguera (PP) has been summoned to testify in the Court of Instruction 6 of Arrecife as an accused next Friday, November 19 at eleven in the morning. The procedure started from a complaint by Alternativa Ciudadana in San Bartolomé against the entire government group, of which Reguera was a part. In total, fifteen people are accused.
The lawsuit was filed in November 2005 by the then councilor of Alternativa Ciudadana in San Bartolomé, José Antonio González (now councilor of the PSOE). The events have to do with the demolition of an 18th-century house and an urban agreement signed with a company by which the City Council ceded two plots in a Compensation Board of which the brother of the then mayor, Miguel Martín, was the administrator.
Reguera governed together with Coalición Canaria (CC) and the Partido de Independientes de Lanzarote (PIL) in San Bartolomé in 2003 and was also a national deputy, so he had the status of aforado. He resigned from his position as councilor in July 2004 and was part of the Government Commission in June 2003. Throughout these five years, the rest of the accused have testified in this procedure and Reguera has been summoned to testify now, since he resigned from his position as deputy in December 2009 upon acceding to the mayoralty of Arrecife.
The events refer to the partial demolition in March 2003 of an 18th-century house included in the Historical-Cultural Heritage Catalog of San Bartolomé. The then mayor Miguel Martín (CC) signed, with the prior authorization of the Government Commission, when he was in office (June 2003) an agreement with the company Garpalanz by which the City Council excluded that house from the catalog, gave a license to segregate the property on which the house was located and bought that property from the company for 90,000 euros.
In addition, the City Council granted a license to build forty-one homes on the rest of the property and commissioned Garpalanz to build a playground, without putting the work out to tender, on the property recently acquired by the City Council. With this agreement, according to the complaint, a plenary agreement of 2002 was violated by which the house was included in the municipal catalog and the granting of licenses was suspended.
Properties in Playa Honda
Later, in March 2005, when Reguera was no longer in the City Council, another agreement was signed with the company Soegan, which inherited the rights of Garpalanz, which annulled the previous one, by which the City Council acquired the property of the 18th-century house, whose demolition had been paralyzed. The company was obliged to rehabilitate the partially demolished house for 377,000 euros. As consideration, the City Council ceded two municipal properties in the industrial area of Playa Honda, valued by an external technician far below the market price, according to the complaint.
The two properties were located within Action Unit number 4 of Playa Honda and the administrator of the compensation board of that Unit was the brother of the mayor Miguel Martín, Cayetano Martín. The City Council had approved said Unit only two months before and had made a modification one month before the agreement.
In that agreement, in addition to the transfer of the properties to the company, the City Council committed to double the buildability of the plots and to modify the subsidiary planning regulations or, if that were not possible, to incorporate the agreed increase in buildability in the General Plan of the municipality, which was being drafted.
New plenary session
In October 2005, the members of the government group ratified the March agreement in plenary session, despite the legal warnings made by Alternativa Ciudadana, which decided to go to court and denounce the entire government group (in which Reguera was no longer), the managers of the companies Garpalanz and Soegan, the appraiser of the properties and the mayor's brother.
The complaint considers that the narrated facts could constitute several crimes of prevarication, embezzlement of public funds, a crime against land management and a crime against Historical Heritage.
Reguera
The mayor of Arrecife has stated to ACN Press that he does not feel that he has committed any crime and that all the reports for the signing of the agreement were favorable. "This figure of the agreement is applied in many city councils," he says.
Reguera emphasizes that he was no longer in the City Council in the plenary agreement of 2005 and that the house was not well protected because the catalog had not been completed. He assures that it was the PP who opened the file and sanctioned the demolition of the property and that they then looked for a way to protect the house through an agreement.
ACN Press
