At the PSdeG-PSOE in Vigo, since the arrival of Caballero (Abel) at town hall, strange things were happening. From Operation Patos to the suspicious attributions to Eiriña, an entrepreneur who had striking conversations -recorded by court order- with the municipal councilors of Vigo and the … then chief of staff David Regades, to surprise the affiliations, the cases of “lumpen-proletariat” with suspicious accounts opened “ad hoc” to pay contributions, the complaints in Bembrive (an activist ended up in prison), the employment projects of those close to the local executive… In short, things that smelled bad at the PSOE and the local government of Vigo.
With more than 30 years of activism, I tried to make myself listened to by the Galician executive and the federal executive and to correct the drift that was leading our party down the path of political corruption. Municipal contracts were used to give work to people who joined the PSOE, to them and their families and associates, in order to change the group’s majorities. People who came only to vote and whom we did not know, always at the end of the assemblies and led by a trusted hotelier, who had obtained a concession and wanted his brother to be a firefighter, and who, years later, offered to the press his statements confessing his misdeeds in the service of Abel and which no one published.
It smelled bad and I said out loud what I saw. While Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba was at the head of the PSOE, the file that Abel and his troops had opened to me did not move; They no longer allowed me to vote in local assemblies, but even this file was canceled for formal defects. It started when Pachi Vázquez was head of the PSdeG. Shortly after, with Besteiro and Sánchez as new leaders in Galicia and Spain, they opened the same file to me again but with the technical advice of Ferraz and, yes, it ended with my expulsion.
By private letter, I informed the organizing secretary of Galicia and Spain of what was happening: I had discovered the case of Carmela Silva’s sister-in-law, who had earned more than 100,000 euros without going to work. I first informed my party: in addition to the organic positions, I transferred it to Besteiro itself. Since I did not have the pleasure of meeting him – I am not from Lugo – neither he nor Pablo García – before, in the time of Pachi – nor César Luena received me. Besteiro told me through newspapers, televisions and radios that if I had proof, I should not make a fuss and go to the prosecutor’s office.
As a disciplined activist, I did everything in my power to ensure that the prosecution took into account the crimes I had exposed. It was not easy or quick to provoke legal action but, ultimately, the Supreme Court upheld the convictions of the provincial court and the TSXG: a person who was a member of the national committee of the PSdeG ended up going to prison for embezzlement, falsification of documents and prevarication.
The one favored by corruption – the sister-in-law of the current president of the PSdeG Carmela Silva – remained unpunished because we filed a complaint late, because they made me dizzy. The Vigo City Council recovered, even if Caballero and his gang did not want it, the more than 100,000 euros embezzled with the false employment of the sister-in-law of the president of the PSdeG, Carmela Silva, the friend of Doña Leire, the plumber.
When the Supreme Court showed that my complaint was founded, I always believed that it would excuse me and open the doors to our party. It wasn’t like that. The secretary at the time was Gonzalo Caballero, with whom I shared the defense of internal democracy, but he should not have found this appropriate. He who defended Madina, for whom I was not allowed to vote in the 2014 primaries.
As you can see, Sánchez and Besteiro are doing the same thing today as they were 11 years ago: turning a blind eye to political corruption and the truth when it affects one of their own. I hope today’s victims will not be deported like they did me. We will have moved forward a little since my political assassination. The path to the truth is long, and the important thing is not to give up, so that the cynics (those who say one thing and do the opposite) do not rule the social democratic party that has governed the longest in democratic Spain.
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