This is the House of Troubles, city council version with more than 200,000 inhabitants. In Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), the main laboratory of the PP-Vox alliance in the region, Mayor Judith Piquet (PP) is being investigated for alleged infidelity in the custody of documents. Her number three, Víctor Acosta (Vox), has been accused of the alleged commission of the crimes of workplace harassment, sexual harassment, threats, and disclosure of secrets by two officials. An opposition councilor, Alberto Blázquez (PSOE), has been investigated for the management of the Sports City in the previous government team. And the spokesperson for Más Madrid, Rosa Romero, is awaiting the materialization of two lawsuits announced against her. One year before the 2027 elections, internal conflicts mark the day-to-day of the City Council: this Friday, the councilors will debate, at the initiative of the PSOE, whether the Vox spokesperson should lose the second deputy mayor position after being accused of harassment. The mayor, according to her team, supports Acosta’s continuity “until there is a final sentence.”
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It all starts with a tweet. Alfonso Serrano, the secretary general of the PP of Madrid, published it in January 2024. The image shows a police incident report about an alleged assault dated December 2023 in which the perpetrator is described as a young black man. For the conservative politician, it is proof that the regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, had grounds to link sexual assaults in the municipality with the arrival of migrants at a reception center. For the investigators, it is an indication of the possible commission of a crime: Who provided Serrano with that confidential document?
The judicial case for infidelity in the custody of documents – a crime that punishes authorities who have taken a document – derived from the controversy has ended with Mayor Piquet and one of her trusted people being investigated. This now places the conservative politician in a precarious position to demand accountability from her Vox ally in light of the accusations made by two officials against the spokesperson of the ultra party. A position of weakness that the PSOE is trying to exploit.
“We request, by virtue of your powers, the immediate precautionary revocation of the powers delegated by the Mayor-Presidency to the Spokesperson of the Vox Municipal Group and 2nd Deputy Mayor, including the deputy mayor position,” reads a document filed by the socialists, which has led to the extraordinary meeting this Friday of the spokespersons’ board for the corresponding vote. “(Also) the activation of the protocol against sexual harassment.”
This is countered by the PP: “The City Council will act in accordance with the law and established procedures, without parallel trials or political campaigns based on noise and permanent confrontation that the opposition has been promoting for years.” In other words, Acosta will remain in his position for now.
Thus, the City Council faces the crisis unleashed by the accusations against the second deputy mayor in a tense atmosphere. The day-to-day of the City Council, according to up to three sources from different parties, has been full of tensions, shouting, and uncomfortable situations. Also, tears. Or internal letters from interim officials denouncing alleged irregularities in management. All this has resulted in constant public reproaches that have translated into multiple legal conflicts.
“All this shows that Judith Piquet’s way of understanding politics is confrontation, which has been taken to the extreme in this City Council,” criticizes Javier Rodríguez, former mayor of Alcalá and leader of the PSOE in the city, as well as a national deputy. “Her lack of temperament, her aggressiveness, ends up poisoning the political climate,” he maintains. “Since the legislature began, she has judicialized politics. It is a confrontational way of understanding politics. The main person responsible is her. The problem is her, not the City Council.”
This is how Rosa Romero, the spokesperson for Más Madrid, laments. “It is complicated to work like this. In the end, politics is not done. There is no debate. You are always thinking about what you say, and how you say it, because depending on what you say you can be sued,” she reasons. “Politics has been judicialized,” she maintains, after being warned of two possible lawsuits for her statements about a police intervention and the presence of a pro-life float in the Three Kings Parade; and after filing documents herself to the Prosecutor’s Office for, for example, the management of municipal swimming pools.
Sources from the Popular Party of Alcalá de Henares consider those positions “absolutely ridiculous.” “The one who judicializes politics in Alcalá is the opposition. Former mayor Javier Rodríguez Palacios has filed up to eight complaints, of which he has already lost seven, against Mayor Judith Piquet trying to win in the courts what he lost at the polls. Added to that are constant documents to the Prosecutor’s Office, lawsuits, and political campaigns based on permanent suspicion,” they argue.
The PP considers it “paradoxical that the arsonists of politics in Alcalá now want to pass themselves off as firefighters.”
Sports City
Vox, precisely, maintains that those legal confrontations may be at the origin of the lawsuit filed against its spokesperson.
“Vox Madrid unequivocally rejects any conduct of harassment, abuse, threat, or illicit use of information that could be proven, but with the same firmness rejects parallel trials and any attempt to use this matter to cover up the substantive issues that the Vox Municipal Group has been raising about municipal management,” continues the document, which hints at the possible relationship between the complaint and the alleged irregularities that Acosta has been denouncing in the management of the local Sports City. And it added: “Without prejudging the substance of the matter, Vox Madrid does not rule out that this complaint may be part of a strategy of intimidation or wear against the oversight activity that our municipal group has been carrying out in defense of the residents of Alcalá de Henares.”
In the PP, for now, they refer to the need to respect the presumption of innocence. However, the countdown to the 2027 elections has already begun, and it may become a thorny path for the partners.
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