Julián Muñoz was the apprentice who rebelled against the master and surpassed him by sublimating his technique. If Jesús Gil patented a Spanish prototype of political wickedness, Julián Muñoz added even more spectacularity to the cocktail and showed it without embarrassment, seasoning populism with a handful of ingredients that mark the moment the country was going through: bricks, garbage bags scattering banknotes, the romance with the tonadillera, the Telecinco after-meals and the pink show as a distillation of the time. Muñoz, born in El Arenal (Ávila) and who died this Tuesday at the age of 76 in Marbella, ended up becoming the ultimate symbol of all this, not only for his central participation in the Malaya Affair and dozens of corruption cases in Marbella, but also because of the television occupation of the immense void left by the premature death of Jesús Gil.
The imprint is still visible in the city: there is a string of thousands of buildings outside the law, a heavy economic burden on municipal accounts, an economic debt that the corrupt struggle to pay and an image etched in the collective imagination thanks to a rampant policy. corruption manifested without shame. Muñoz and his troupe have shown the country the putrefaction of its ecosystem, fueled by the combination of power, greed and jealousy, and the decisive collaboration of the programs of the heart, providers by accident of the public service of unclogging the sewers.
Television has not only contributed to the image of widespread corruption in Marbella, but has also ended up influencing the judicial proceedings, as a result of the absurdities told on the sets. This is Maite Zaldívar in Well done for the afternoon! (Canal Sur), with Agustín Bravo: “I confirm that my relationship with Julián Felipe Muñoz Palomo, mayor of Marbella, is broken. Because I believe, suppose or assume that he is with another lady, named Isabel Pantoja Martín. It is Maite Zaldívar, now in By your side (Telecinco), mean by the horns: “It was money that was at my house, which he told me was normal, that it came from some construction commissions. “He told me about it when he came with the bags.” The love between the most famous tonadillera in Spain and the mayor of Marbella had a decisive influence in the outbreak of the great cause of the corruption of democracy.
And the top of all this. It’s face to face Pink Sauce (Telecinco) between Jesús Gil and Julián Muñoz. They entered into simultaneous communication, with the promise that the enemy would wait his turn with the microphone off. But the director increased the volume, and in the middle of the comments about the calm that everyone heard, the sound heated up until it ended in a fight to clarify which of the two was the strongest. Julián Muñoz: “I signed all the agreements of this city that you sent me. You are a bastard and a liar. “You forced me to sign everything!” Jesús Gil: “The Gulf is you, the one who put your hand in favor of everyone and you turned your office, the city hall, you turned it into a robbery house. And as soon as you enter, the first thing you pay is the commission.
This show in prime time Saturday put the prosecutor’s office on alert (if it hadn’t already) and is at the origin of Operation Malaya. And despite the trance, Julián Muñoz has not learned. While several files are already open and Operation Malaya is about to explode, he was able to go on TVE to discuss his relationship with Isabel Pantoja while stirring some potatoes.
“This put Marbella on the same level as Torrente”
“He put Marbella on the level of Torrente and the city council reached an incomparable and unprecedented level of stickiness and mercellin. The one from now on [la alcaldesa Ángeles Muñoz] “At least it’s Chanel,” summarizes the lawyer Inmaculada Gálvez, scourge of gilism and post-gilism, both in the political world (she was a candidate and then a parliamentarian for the Greens) and, mainly, in the judicial world. From that time, he remembers Muñoz’s sexist comments during the trial hearings.
It was Gálvez who initiated the series of complaints about the irregularities of the Hotel Guadalpín, built by the construction company Aifos with a minor renovation permit and against the criteria of six reports from municipal technicians. It is the immediate predecessor of Operation Malaya. “He called us to the office and asked us: ‘But what do you want, what do you want?’ “I was hallucinating.” Aifos ended up being the great fallen giant (its owners were for years the main debtors – individuals – of the Treasury) of the real estate bubble on the Costa del Sol and Muñoz was convicted for the illegality of the license he had granted. just a day after Isabel Pantoja bought one of her luxury apartments paying all in cash: 353,000 euros.
It was notorious, but it was one of many instances in which Gálvez faced Muñoz in court. He estimates that he has been the subject of a private accusation in about fifty trials against him; half were celebrated, the other half ended in a conviction after he reached an agreement with the prosecution to admit the facts. The courts do not even know how many convictions he has, but they are estimated at more than a hundred.
At that time, Muñoz was signing agreements even on the hoods of cars. “He realized that the source of personal financing was signing licenses and agreements, and he started giving them away like crazy. That was his way of understanding politics: receiving benefits and then distributing them. That’s what led him to make a pilgrimage to the courts for so many years,” recalls Javier de Luis, another former city councilor and environmental activist who has faced gilism since the first complaint in the T-shirt case.
The rise of Muñoz
A waiter by profession, Muñoz entered politics in 1991 and became the most loyal soldier of the charismatic Jesús Gil. “What will happen now if Gil leaves? Sorry, I say this with all my modesty. The next mayor, my right-hand man: Julián Muñoz. “He knows what we all have to do,” he had introduced him at the time. First he replaced him when he was disqualified. And in May 2003, while Gil was serving his crimes, the dauphin obtained an absolute majority.
So start your affair with the singer, in which she lends herself to everything: the show, the business. He is at the top of the wave. And that’s where he ends up losing his wings because he wants to fly higher than his boss and the shadowy character who manages everything, Juan Antonio Roca.
Gil orders his people to defend him at all costs, and through the motion of censure of August 2004, the pus of a system supported by corruption finally appears. At first, Marisol Yagüe, Gil and company try to negotiate with the PP, but Javier Arenas raises the stakes and asks for the town hall with three councilors. And the account fails. It is then that the embers of gilismo knock on the door of the PSOE and the Andalusian Party in Marbella, which they attract to the cause.
Inmaculada Gálvez defines it as the hit of the “chaneles”. Muñoz’s fate is decided. Yagüe wins the mayoralty and García Marcos ends up being a key element of the post-Gilismo and expelled from the PSOE. “García Marcos said that Muñoz called her and said: ‘I’ll give you double what Gil gives you. That motion was a prostitution of politics,'” De Luis recalls.
“Gil created the school with gifted students like Muñoz”
This was the beginning of the slow decline of the former mayor, whose attitude changed overnight. He contacted some of his toughest opponents, he softened. On July 19, 2006, he was arrested as part of Operation Malaya and began a judicial ordeal that accompanied him almost to the end. “In power, he was very arrogant and he became affable. What is surprising is that, far from reproaching him for anything, many people got up from the tables to hug him, kiss him, ask him questions. He never lost that charisma. No one reproached him,” De Luis emphasizes.
In recent years, his image and his own life have been marked by cancer. Due to the hundreds of sentences he has received, he has served barely eight years in prison, part of which he has spent on prison benefits. “I want to be with my daughters and my grandchildren, nothing more. “I aspire to try to live,” he replied in his first prison permit, granted in 2016, three years after entering Alhaurín de la Torre prison. Shortly after, he was granted the third degree due to his health, but it was withdrawn after a video of him dancing sevillanas was released. In 2021, he was released on parole.
“Neither death nor illness make us saints,” Gálvez sums up. Luis sees the character as a symptom: “Gil created the school, with gifted students like Muñoz or Yagüe. They were not at the service of the citizens, but rather to see how they served the citizens. He is the confirmation of the degradation of politics in this city.”
