Two former mayors and a former security adviser were convicted in 2011 of the crime of manslaughter following the deaths of a British couple in a flood that hit a flood zone in Finestrat, a town in the Marina region Baixa de Alicante. , where a municipal market was installed. They are the former socialist mayor José Miguel Llorca; of his successor from the PP, Honorato Algado, and of the former popular security advisor Tomás Gaspar Sellés Llorca.
The Alicante Provincial Prosecutor’s Office initially requested a sentence of four years in prison for each of the three accused for two crimes of homicide for serious recklessness, another for injury and crime of damage. However, the two former mayors and the former mayor reached an agreement with the public prosecutor, who reduced the requested sentence to a fine of 5,400 euros for two less serious offenses of manslaughter, in application of a reform judicial of 2015. the criminal court number 1 of Benidorm rendered an “in voce” judgment, which alternatively condemned the town hall of Finestrat and the insurance company to pay the unpaid debt of 1,000 euros for civil liability.
The events date back to October 21, 2011, when a strong downpour hit Cala de Finestrat and caused a flood in the ravine which swept away the hundred stalls of the municipal market, the traders’ vehicles and all its infrastructure. A British couple, Kenneth and Mary Hall, died after being swept away by the force of the water. In addition, two other people were injured.
José Miguel Llorca, socialist mayor of the municipality between 1983 and 2007, authorized a municipal market in the middle of a state-owned public waterway in 1984 without the required administrative authorization from the Hydrographic Confederation of Júcar (CHJ ).
Sanction of the CHJ
A company operated the market through an administrative concession until 2009, when the municipality itself, with the popular Honorato Algado as mayor, assumed management of the market, although, according to the public prosecutor’s office, “it The corresponding authorization was still missing. and to know “the risks of flooding in the event of rain in the aforementioned canal”.
This is the mayor of the PP who, between 2007 and 2015, preceded Juan Francisco Pérez Llorca, current first mayor of Finestrat and right-hand man of Carlos Mazón. Pérez Llorca is secretary general of the Valencian PP and popular spokesperson for the Valencian courts.
The two mayors asphalted and paved the boulevard, thus preventing the infiltration of rain. In 2009, with Honorato Algado as mayor, the CHJ launched a sanction procedure against the town hall of Fienstrat for having developed the ravine. The council was fined and forced to return the gully to its original state.
