The mayor of Algeciras José Ignacio Landaluce remains in office, despite the media storm that overshadows his figure in the face of the complaint for sexual harassment, embezzlement and influence peddling that the PSOE filed with the Supreme Court. “If I resign, it would be agreeing with those who lie and attack,” he said, just as he will maintain his position as a PP senator “in defense of the Gibraltar campaign.”
In an interview with Onda Cero, the councilor described the actions taken by the socialists as a “set-up” and “personal persecution”, saying that he is accused “of something that I did not do”. “To date, no complaint has been filed against me by these people,” he said on Thursday, adding that he would maintain the complaint filed before the Court No. 1 of Algeciras due to the “atrocities” presented by the opposition.
The historic leader of the city also had a few words about the pressure that Marco Borrego, Landaluce’s trusted position, exerted on one of the former councilors of the City Hall allegedly harassed, whom he asked to pretend before a notary that she suffered from a “mental imbalance” to bury the controversy.
“On October 3, 2023, the chief of staff of the City Hall, my friend Bernardo, sent me an email, which my former colleague Laura Ruiz had sent,” he explained, in which he assured that what the PSOE was saying “was entirely false.” As for the meeting of which there are recordings, he simplified its scope by saying that “he was not there” and, according to what was transmitted by his party colleagues, “they wanted to leave everything to continue working for Algeciras.”
Moreno Bonilla speaks out
For his part, the President of the Council and leader of the PP in Andalusia, Juan Manuel Moreno, spoke for the first time this Thursday about the case of the popular senator and historic mayor of Algeciras, denounced for alleged sexual abuse of two former municipal councilors, among other crimes.
Moreno distanced himself from Landaluce, who until last month was a “reference” in the party, and assured that his party lacks “instruments of pressure” to precipitate his resignation as mayor of Algeciras, the tenth most populous city in Andalusia. “Landaluce is not a member of our party. We have no instrument of pressure on him,” declared the President of the Council, in front of a crowd of journalists in the corridors of Parliament, where the last autonomous budgets of the legislature are approved this Thursday.
Moreno had to break the silence in which the PP has been plunged since last Wednesday, Andalusian Post Office published a recording in which we hear a popular leader, Marcos Borrego, pressuring a former municipal councilor to claim in writing and before a notary that she suffered from “mental imbalance” when she broadcast WhatsApp messages from two colleagues from the City Hall who denounced touching and abuse on the part of Landaluce.
“Pressure and blackmail”
The audios splashed Moreno’s PP on the day he had to boast of stability with the approval of record budgets of 51.6 billion euros. The deputies of all the opposition parties who took to the podium of Parliament dishonored the popular parties for their “mafia” and “pressure and blackmail” maneuvers on women to make them appear “crazy” to protect “harassers and sexists”.
The President of the Council and leader of the Andalusian PP recalled that Landaluce had requested the suspension of activism last week, when the PSOE formalized the complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office for cases of abuse, abandoned his organic functions – he resigned from his position as president of the PP of Algeciras – and moved to the joint group of the Senate. “He joined the mixed group of the Senate. The provincial leadership of Cádiz is the one that has a direct relationship with him and the one that speaks with him,” Moreno hastily emphasized, at the entrance to the plenary room of the Parliament.
Broken relationships
Sources from the leadership of the Andalusian PP assure that they have “cut off” relations with Landaluce for a week, that the historic mayor has been calling the leaders around the president for days, but “they are not answering the phone”. Although Moreno assured that the PP lacks pressure instruments to force Landaluce’s departure from City Hall, in reality the party has 12 councilors who could promote a motion of censure against its leader.
In the PP, we exclude this hypothesis because it would mean opening a “civil war” in a very important city – with 125,000 inhabitants –, capital of Moreno’s interests during the regional elections which will take place in a few months. Landaluce has governed Algeciras for two decades, with five absolute majorities and a single period of coalition government with Ciudadanos. His control of the party in his municipality and the affinities of his advisors make difficult the option of an internal rebellion promoted by the leadership of the PP of Cádiz to impose a motion of censure.
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