It takes time, but Justice eventually arrives. And although there will certainly be many issues that remain in the darkness of an obscure past, at least some are coming to light. In some cases, the people and their corporation colleagues had already taken away their power, but now it is Justice that is sealing the end of an era. The one that is punishing times in which certain politicians, especially entrenched from the power of a town hall, did as they pleased as if they were above good and evil. And now, they have come to make it clear that they were not.
Dimas Martín, who began his meteoric political career as mayor of Teguise, met years ago the prison of Tahíche and still goes there to sleep every night, by virtue of the third degree prison regime. José Francisco Reyes, who granted dozens of illegal licenses, already has a first conviction for urban planning prevarication behind him, for which he has been imposed a disqualification penalty of ten years. And Juan Ramírez, who had already been convicted of a crime of documentary falsification in the Villa Dolores case, is now facing a new conviction, this time for fraud in the sale of a home. And both Ramírez and Reyes still have pending trials for urban crimes.
Thus, the feeling of impunity comes to an end, and perhaps it will also serve as an exemplary measure. Because precisely the slowness of judicial processes may have led some to become too confident, believing that the law was something that did not apply to them.
In fact, in the cases cited, not only are the crimes committed noteworthy, but also how crude and gross the way of committing crimes is. In the case of the former mayor of Yaiza, about whom rivers of ink have already been written, he tried to argue before the judge that although he granted illegal licenses left and right, he has no idea about urban planning nor did he read the reports because he was not going to understand them. And that, far from freeing him from the conviction for urban planning prevarication, also cost him the judge to underline in her sentence that he acted with "negligence" and "very little responsibility, if not none, in his management as mayor."
In the case of Ramírez, his first conviction was for falsifying a contract so that the City Council would pay more than triple the price that had been agreed in the plenary session for the rent of a property. The second, revealed this week by La Voz de Lanzarote, for selling a home to individuals, hiding the fact that it had a mortgage and was about to be foreclosed.
But in addition, he must still answer for the granting of fifteen licenses in several locations in Haría, some even, according to the prosecutor, obtaining a personal benefit.
Specifically, according to the indictment, he requested a license to expand his home in Arrieta, and he himself authorized it, forgetting that he had a duty to abstain, because he was directly involved. And he did the same, according to the prosecutor, when the company of which his then wife was the administrator requested a license to segregate several farms. In addition, he granted it without the pertinent reports and, in some cases, on plots reserved for "green area or sports use." And as if that were not enough, the Public Prosecutor adds that the next day, Juan Ramírez bought several of those segregated farms.
In addition, in the batch of those 15 licenses investigated by the Justice, there is also one granted to his fellow convict in the Villa Dolores case and beneficiary of the lease of the farm, Pedro Perdomo Reyes, to whom Ramírez gave the green light to build two bungalows in the Charco del Palo, despite the fact that there were unfavorable technical reports.
For both Ramírez and José Francisco Reyes, their eternal mandates ended in a motion of censure, which removed them from municipal power. But that does not mean that their past does not continue to haunt them, in the form of courts of Justice. And it is that although it arrives late, and perhaps not to all the corners that it should, at least Justice begins to put, little by little, things in their place.