Amaia del Campo, mayor of Barakaldo, will testify next Friday in local courts as being investigated in workplace harassment proceedings. The case of the former City Hall lawyers, who have been in dispute since 2018 before the administrative litigation and before the social courts, is now beginning criminal proceedings. The procedure is at a preliminary stage, in the investigation phase, following a complaint from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, but currently it is taking the mayor of the PNV to court in the open confrontation she is having with those who were city hall lawyers. , and that Del Campo “inherited” the stage of socialist government within the municipality upon his arrival at town hall in 2015. These are José María de Pablos and María Dívar, who are the private prosecutors in this procedure.
Sources of the parties confirmed that with the mayor, they will testify before the Court of Instruction number 3 of Barakaldo on the investigation – former accused – other accusations and old accusations of the City Hall: Gorka Zubiaurre, delegated councilor of Alaldía, Forces Iratxe, advisor and former head of human resources, Humberto Estébanez, former municipal secretary general, Yolanda Fika, former advisor to citizen security, doctor and head of the occupational health, Fernando Mier, and Sonia Samaniego, chief of staff.
The accusations against them range from crimes against moral integrity, against workers’ rights, to prevarication or falsification of public documents. The plaintiff lawyers accuse the mayor and her team of “degrading treatment” and alleged manipulation of municipal bylaws.
The open conflict between the mayor and the workers began in 2018. The PNV met this legal team, made up of José María Pablos, as lead lawyer, and María Dívar, interim lawyer, as soon as they arrived at City Hall after winning the 2015 elections, after overthrowing the previous socialist government for the first time in 32 years. Three years later, the clashes between the mayor and the lawyers began, which ended up in court, with the majority of convictions so far being in favor of the lawyers – there are still cases to be decided.
The conflicts began when María Dívar requested that her position in the RPT (Job List) be assimilated to that of her colleague José María Pablos, believing that he performed the same functions. Even if the plenary assembly of the municipal council was mostly favorable to her, with the vote of the PSE-EE, EH Bildu and Irabazi, the left-wing brand of the time, the worker’s appeal was ultimately rejected. After several requests from María Dívar to recognize certain salary supplements that the City Council rejected by decree, one of the moments of greatest tension between the City Hall and the legal services occurred in 2019 when Pablos and Dívar prepared a report on the judicial defense in the contentious-administrative appeal filed by the Miranda Foundation against a motion approved by the Municipal Plenary Assembly in September 2018. In this report, the lawyers recommended revoking this plenary agreement, believing that they did not have the power to approve it and that the established legal procedure had not been followed. The mayor decided to go ahead and defend the motion in court, but she ultimately lost.
From this moment, the Town Hall noted in a decree of March 2019 that the lawyers followed the procedural practice consisting of requesting alone the suspension of procedures when they considered that they were not respecting the law without relying on the Town Hall or the region. concerned, and considering that there was a loss of trust, Amaia del Campo had a series of instructions to force them to communicate in advance all decisions in the procedural area. This decree, which restricts the functions of lawyers, was later declared contrary to the law and void by the courts after admitting the contentious-administrative appeal presented by María Dívar and José Mará Pablos.
A few months later, in October 2019, the mayor approved the launch of the procedure for “dismissal” – deprivation of position or employment – of José Mari Pablos from his post, alleging a “lack of confidence”, of a on the one hand, due to the actions before the courts without relying on the municipal bodies and, on the other hand, for the support of the temporary worker in his salary demands. In January 2020, Amaia del Campo signed a decree to fire the head of the legal department, José María Pablos, and demote him to the position of legal advisor. The next day, also by decree, he dismissed the one who was then legal advisor because, being an interim civil servant, her position disappeared when it was occupied by the former head of the legal department. Another decree which, a year later, was annulled by the judge and ordered the City Hall to reinstate them in their positions, paying them what they stopped receiving during this period, including Social Security. The TSJPV subsequently rejected the municipal council’s appeal against this decision.
Subsequently, the court also accepted the contentious-administrative appeal filed by María Dívar and recognized her right to the salary supplements she requested.
The tension reached its maximum level when in 2022 the forced retirement of the head lawyer at 66 years and two months was approved, despite the fact that in April of the previous year he had been authorized to extend his activity until he is 70 years old. A decision which was also overturned by the courts.
Alongside the conflict with the lawyers and having lost “confidence” in the legal team, the Town Hall called on the services of external law firms which were highly criticized by the opposition and questioned by the city’s own auditor. the Town Hall. Those who were his government partners in the previous legislature and who are in the current legislature, the PSE-EE, also positioned themselves against the mayor throughout the process against the lawyers, who openly criticized the “stations of the cross” to which these workers were subjected.
