The National Police disavows the commissioner of Paterna for the decoration awarded to a far-right leader

Start of the act last Tuesday for the day of the National Police in Paterna, in which Levantina de Seguridad was awarded, in the person of its owner, José Luis Roberto, in an image of the municipal press release.

Last Tuesday, the Paterna National Police station decorated José Luis Roberto, president of the far-right party España 2000, in response to his collaboration with the body of the Levantina de Seguridad company, of which he is the owner, in this municipality located eight kilometers from Valencia.

Roberto is also the current lawyer for the minor (now of legal age) who denounced in 2017 having suffered sexual abuse by Luis Ramírez Icardi, ex-husband of the former Valencian vice president, Mónica Oltra, of Compromís.

The decision has raised a strong controversy and the reaction of the Superior Headquarters of the National Police of the Valencian Community, which this Wednesday has categorically disassociated itself from the decoration, which it has attributed to a personal decision of the chief inspector of the police station of Paterna, Jose Manuel Pujante.

"The case will be studied and responsibilities will be purged," sources from the Headquarters told this newspaper this morning.

In the act held on Tuesday at the Paterna police station on the occasion of the patron saint of the Guardian Angel of the National Police, various distinctions were distributed;

Among them, one to the controversial lawyer and former leader of the Spanish association of hostess clubs as owner of Levantina de Seguridad, for his collaboration and security work, especially in the urbanizations of this town of 70,000 inhabitants.

The chief inspector of the Paterna police station, José Manuel Pujante, presided over the act along with other officers, as can be seen in the press release from the City Council —whose deputy mayor for Security, Nuria Campos, was also awarded— or in a Roberto's own tweet.

Receiving an award for collaboration with the National Police on employer's day pic.twitter.com/T7R9rEI0AV

– José Luis Roberto Navarro (@JLRoberto1953) October 4, 2022

Sources from the Valencia Provincial Headquarters of the National Police have insisted this morning to this newspaper that the body has had nothing to do with the award and that there has been a chain of errors, including awarding a private security company .

They emphasize that this is an "individual" decision and that the relevant "responsibilities" will be established.

The act, in which the police officers wore their uniforms, took place in a room presided over by the logo of the National Police, as in previous years.

EL PAÍS has contacted the Patena police station this Wednesday to obtain the testimony of the chief inspector on the reasons for the award to Roberto, advanced by

, without having received a response so far.

In the afternoon, the Headquarters has sent a statement that says the following: “In relation to the information known today, it is communicated that the National Police does not recognize said recognition, being an individual action of the person in charge of the Paterna Police Station.

The only prizes that we recognize are the Police Merit medals that have been awarded by the General Directorate of the Police”.

“Such recognition of private” security, “is out of place and untimely, since these mentions officially have a channel and a regulatory channel through the Private Security Day, where private security personnel who has stood out in the year”.

And it concludes.

“It is reiterated again that it is an individual action of the person in charge of the Local Police Station, to whom the corresponding reserved information will be opened to purge the responsibilities incurred by his lack of follow-up of the established regulatory channels.”

The Government delegate in the Valencian Community, Pilar Bernabé, has confirmed that the National Police has opened an internal investigation into the award and has reiterated that the recognition of José Luis Roberto did not have the approval of the General Directorate of Police and that, therefore, the Paterna police station did it “in a concrete and isolated way”.

The mayor of Paterna, the socialist Juan Antonio Sagredo, attended the beginning of the event, but was absent due to scheduling problems before its completion and was not present during the delivery of the award to Roberto, according to municipal sources told

.

In the municipal press release, neither Levantina de Seguridad nor the far-right lawyer are included among the winners.

For its part, Compromís has demanded this Wednesday that the Ministry of the Interior open an investigation for the decoration that the National Police has awarded in Paterna (Valencia) to José Luis Roberto.

The Compromís spokesperson in Congress, Joan Baldoví, asked a person linked to "the darkest plots of the extreme right" about this award.

"He participated in violent acts, in a violent escrache against a woman with two children [Mónica Oltra and her two children] and is charged with crimes of Islamophobia, for hate crimes," he has pointed out.

The general coordinator of Esquerra Unida and counselor of Transpaencia, Rosa Pérez Garijo, has branded as "shameful" the decoration that the National Police has awarded in Paterna (Valencia) to the leader of Spain 2000: "These events are an attack against our democracy.

José Luis Roberto is an insult to democracy”.

"We will use all institutional channels to ask for explanations for the recognition," Garijo emphasizes, to underline that the recipient is "well known in our country for instigating and leading a large number of violent episodes that directly attack our democracy."