After a decade long legal journey "Operation Costurero" against former Zurgena Mayor Cándido Trabalón ended yesterday afternoon, Wednesday, when he voluntarily entered El Acebuche prison to serve a sentence for urban corruption. The former leader of the Andalusian Party (PA) appeared at Almería prison a few minutes before 20:00 hours.
Trabalón begins a sentence of five years and four months in prison for the crime of urban prevarication, a crime of falsehood of an official document, a crime against the ordination of the territory and a crime of improper bribery.
The ruling of the Supreme Court (TS), which slightly modified the resolution issued by the Provincial Court of Almeria, condemned Cándido Trabalón for "granting building licenses for the construction of housing on undeveloped land of the municipality."
The investigation started in April 2008, when the Civil Guard Judicial Police broke into Zurgena Council Offices. The case was named Operation Seamstress, from which different separate pieces emanated. In this matter, the court considered Cándido Trabalón and 15 other persons responsible for a system for the licensing of non-developed rustic land from 2003.
These were the years of a housing boom and the construction companies were looking for opportunities on uninhabited land in the Almanzora Valley and Levante. Zurgena had non-developed land attractive to businesses.
System
“The defendant wanted to grant licenses for works on undeveloped land but, knowing that they were illegal, he did not wish to do so manifestly, so he decided not to voluntarily resolve on the granting or denial of the licenses by allowing the term of three months to pass without issuing a resolution granting or denying the license to then certify his grant by administrative silence.” says the court ruling. “Cándido Trabalón granted a total of 30 licenses for positive administrative silence for a total of 155 homes,” added the Provincial Court of Almeria.
The ruling also blamed Cándido Trabalón and Manuel Tijeras, ex-councillor for Urban Planning, for “a series of segregation licenses for rural estates located on undeveloped land, with the knowledge that authentic urban development plots were being authorised and that the law prohibits urban development plots in undeveloped land”. "These licenses were granted totally and absolutely disregarding the administrative procedure established because none of those that will be related below were issued the mandatory legal reports," they added.
In order to try to give the “appearance of legality” to the licenses, the defendants “decided to use the subterfuge of considering non-developable land as urban land when it had provided access services to urban roads, water supply, sanitation and low voltage electricity supply”. The town council offered services and gave the green light.
