A powerful politician is accused of offering public employment to a member of his party in exchange for his membership. The scandal that caused the decline of José Tomé as socialist president of the Lugo Division is not new in Galicia. Barely ten years ago, a female member of the PP made a similar accusation against a provincial baron of her party, José Manuel Baltar Blanco. Several of the players who were on the front lines when this case was finally filed in court broke down. Nothing to do with it, however, the agreement obtained by the leader highlighted the internal consequences of the two political groups.
In 2015, Alberto Núñez Feijóo was the maximum authority of the popular gallegos, with Alfonso Rueda as number one, and José Ramón Gómez Besteiro commanded the PSdeG-PSOE. José Manuel Baltar, then president of the Diputación and the PP of Ourense, was accused by a party comrade of having promised him a public job in exchange for sexual favors. The woman, who had worked temporarily both in the provincial body and in the party, had messages and audios from 2010 in which Baltar assumed that she could change notes in the opposition of the provincial institution that her priest presided over. She went to court after having a relationship with the politician and not being hired. It was also blamed on alleged acquaintance.
Baron de Feijóo in Ourense has been under judicial scrutiny since 2017 and during this period benefited from the iron support of the president of the Xunta at the time. The current PP field leader defended Baltar while opposing the complainant, publicly questioning her testimony and accusing her of acting for spurious reasons: “What this person asked was that Señor Baltar was a delinquent and Señor Baltar was not a delinquent.” He said he spoke with his companion in the queues and was refused everything.
While the PSdeG had unleashed a wave of unrest against Besteiro, the PP Gallego closed ranks with the accused politician. While under investigation for sexual harassment, knowledge and influence peddling, Baltar was even re-elected provincial leader of the party. His case ended up being archived, but not because the judge concluded that the political offer had not been produced. The instructor considered that no employment or service relationship existed between them that would qualify as sexual harassment. The outgoing president, I say that when these events happened in 2010, the president of the Diputación de Ourense, the entity that gave the gift to the woman, was not José Manuel Baltar but his priest José Luis and I could not believe that this influenced him. At the center, you put the legal consequences for Baltar, but also the political ones. He now holds a seat in the Senate after being convicted of being robbed while driving an official bus at more than 200 kilometers per hour.
The complaint against Tomé on the PSOE’s anti-acoso channel accuses him of having offered a public job to the daughter of a party activist in exchange for maintaining sexual relations with him. When the accusations were made public, the socialist negotiated them but left the party and the presidency of the Diputación (at the town hall of the provincial office). His resignation did not prevent the PSdeG general secretary from facing strong internal criticism because he admitted that he had known about the file for months and had not acted against it. When it broke Baltar affair In 2015, Besteiro was also the leader of the Gallegian socialists and accused Feijóo of being “lukewarm” on sexual harassment: “He must clearly condemn this type of behavior,” he told the people during a plenary session of the Gallegian Parliament.
Today, Feijóo’s successor accuses him of being a socialist. “Politics is not about looking the other way when forceful action is needed,” Rueda said of him last Sunday. Thomas affair. The popular one, which I kept in his possession for four months at his disposal advise de Mar, denounced for sexual assault and resigned with honors, extended his disapproval to the BNG, member of the PSOE in the government of the Diputación de Lugo: “Gobierna con allos ellos y mira al otro lado whenever you have to react with force”.
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