Vanessa Romero: The Maracena councilor links her kidnapping to alleged irregularities in the City Hall | Spain | The USA Print

The case of the councilor of Maracena (Granada, 22,000 inhabitants) held in her own vehicle for hours and threatened with a gun by the couple of the mayor of said municipality has incorporated new data that points to political disputes as a possible motive. The mayor Vanessa Romero told the investigators of the case her belief that her kidnapping is related to some documents in her possession, which supposedly reflect irregularities in the political management of the mayoress, according to sources close to the case. The Civil Guard already has these papers and is analyzing their content. Investigators also have the weapon with which the detainee allegedly pointed the victim, which has turned out to be a fake pistol. The Civil Guard has informed this Thursday that it is going to extend the detention of Pedro Gómez, 44, up to the legal maximum of 72 hours. He is scheduled to be brought before the court on Friday at mid-afternoon.

The husband of the detained councilor has assured that his wife had a problematic political relationship with the socialist mayor, Berta Linares, and that, personally, they were limited to greeting each other, as published by the newspaper Grenada Today. The mayor Romero is part of the government team and has been in charge since last June of a newly created council, Maracena 2030. Romero had been a councilor for Urban Planning since the 2019 municipal elections until Linares’ arrival as mayor, in 2022 .

Romero’s husband has declared to the Granada newspaper that he believes that, despite the existence of these documents on municipal management, his wife was not going to file any complaint. He has also assured that the mayoress and general secretary of the local PSOE was not going to count on her for the lists for the next municipal elections, in May of this year.

The person arrested for this event was a partner of the mayor Berta Linares “for a year and a half or two years,” according to the mayor herself in an appearance before the media, in which she terminated the relationship and showed all her support for her councilor. . According to Linares, he lived most of the time in Malaga, where he has a business selling children’s balloons. Linares considered that her now ex-partner did not know anything about what was happening in the City Hall. The councilor explained that the arrested man received “psychological and psychiatric” treatment for depression, and that she never perceived a violent profile in him.

In that appearance, the mayoress was sure that this event would be used politically against her. “But that doesn’t worry me now,” she added. As soon as information began to circulate that there were documents that could compromise the actions of the municipal government, the PP of Maracena announced that it will request the appearance of the mayoress in an extraordinary plenary session to dispel “any doubt about an alleged motive for denouncing corruption in the Consistory”. For its part, the provincial PP has demanded “the urgent creation of an investigative commission to clarify the municipal management of the Maracena City Council.” He has also asked the mayoress to clarify “what municipal records are in the possession of the State Security Forces and Corps and what areas of the local government of Maracena they belong to.”

Pedro Gómez was arrested at five in the afternoon on Tuesday in a central area of ​​Maracena, after a search of four or five hours by the security forces. In the morning, he allegedly met with the councilor at the school where he had taken his children ―in the town of Atarfe, bordering Maracena, in an area outside the urban area― and asked her to take him to a gas station. close. Already on the way, she threatened him with a gun and clamped her hands and feet to put her in the trunk, according to the reconstruction of what happened from the statements of witnesses and sources of the investigation. From there they went to Armilla, 15 minutes away, in her vehicle, where he parked the car inside a place he had rented for some time and left it in the trunk.

The now arrested man left Armilla – sources of the investigation say that he took the subway naturally and returned to Maracena – while the councilor got out of the trunk, knocking down the seats of the vehicle. Once outside of her, with her cell phone, she called her brother who notified the security forces. The mayor managed to get out of the garage and with the help of some people she removed her bridles before the Local Police arrived. Finally, the Civil Guard transferred her to a hospital where she was from one in the afternoon until she was discharged at four in the afternoon. Subsequently, she was declaring until the early hours of the night. In that statement, she told investigators her suspicions that the documents might be behind the assault.