“It seems logical (I indicated this to Pellón during our previous meeting) that when a project is prepared, there is a budget and we check whether it is carried out or not. Once, I took the liberty of asking you the budget linked to the Expo Parade. … To my great surprise, he ended up responding that he couldn’t give me the budget for the parade because the exhibition is in progress and not yet finished. Mr. Pellón, when do you make the budget, before you start the parade or when it ends? By budget I mean something that is done before and serves as a check for subsequent execution. Otherwise, it would be a sort of post-guess, but not a budget. I don’t understand why you won’t give me the budget for the parade. Don’t you want me to find out if it became obsolete later? “I have the right to know.”
“Participating companies. You have taken Baron de Coubertin’s motto to the extreme. For you, the important thing was to participate and you insisted, against the advice of certain leaders who found themselves outside the Expo, on the creation of companies in which you would invest. He not only limited himself to managing a rather complicated invention, but also became an entrepreneur. The results of the invested companies have not been very brilliant to say the least. Coral, for example, the accommodation company, for which you announced profits – and convinced your partners that they would be – of eight billion pesetas, finds itself with a deficit of four billion. A difference of 12 billion is not bad for a single company. “As you stated, despite a capital of around twenty percent and profits slightly above fifty percent, in the final arbitration in which the Coral Dawn Rosary ended, the arbitrator forces you to bear more than fifty percent of the losses, which are the citizens’ money. “You made citizens lose money by getting involved in an issue, even though their hotel experience does not seem excessive.”
Pellón presented his arguments logically: “I needed to manage a city that you don’t know either, the size of the Olympic Village, which is called Expo City; We don’t talk about it, it seems that Expo City did not exist; “It worked very well and was managed by Coral.”
One question remained: “Why don’t you hire the real experts directly, instead of companies that seem to only serve as a front?” » When Ríococon was revealed, he implied that it had been included to avoid the contract being exclusively for Dragados and noted that it was even less convincing: “I have a newspaper here where there are only six contracts and three from Dragados y Construcciones: Expo Building, 3 billion pesetas; Expo-Umbraculo, 200 million pesetas; elevated panoramic train, 2.6 billion pesetas. They all come from Dragados y Construcciones; In other words, don’t give the impression that here Dragados y Construcciones experienced the tragedy that, since one of your former employees was at the Expo, she could not be hired.
“On October 13, I received something as curious as the balance sheet for the 1982 financial year. I repeat that I received it on October 13 even though I had requested it in April. What’s going on? On October 13, 1992, were you taking stock of 10 years previously, or had you conspired – and this is the real conspiracy – so that an issue of the Universal Exhibition would not come out before October 13? Is this admissible in a democratic system, Mr. Pellón? Does this have anything to do with efficiency and agility? This is what worries our Group.
“Publicity is the categorical imperative of a politician. When a politician has doubts about whether he should do something or not, he only needs to ask himself whether what he is doing can be made public or not, because anything that cannot be made public should not be done. “By that standard, most of the things you’ve done shouldn’t be done, because you don’t make them public, so you feel like you’re condemning yourself.”
“And know one thing, Mr. Pellón. In this House, asking is not offensive. It is the House of the question and the House of the answer. Therefore, do not feel offended. In this House, because there are public figures here, the presumption of innocence never prevails, the presumption of responsibility prevails.
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