Controversy over a meal from the leadership of the Balearic PP with a former high-ranking officer imprisoned for corruption

More than 50 positions of the PP of the Balearic Islands meet to eat in an establishment in the Mallorcan town of Sencelles.

The elections are approaching and there are strategies to close, issues to discuss and appointments to note.

The food is attended by the senior staff of the Balearic formation with the president of the party, Marga Prohens, at the helm.

In one corner of the table, next to Prohens, dressed in a red jersey and blue shirt, sits the former general secretary of the party in Palma and government delegate, José María Rodríguez, currently in third grade after being sentenced to three and a half years in prison. jail for using public funds to benefit a

who was in charge of the party's electoral campaigns between 2003 and 2007. Rodríguez, who was also Minister of the Interior during the Matas government, chatted with those present during lunch and even addressed a few words standing up to the fifty people who were They congregated on the premises.

The images of the food, published by

and dated last Friday, the 24th, have raised a political storm that has reached the headquarters of the formation.

They show the role that Rodríguez continues to have in the party in which, since the 1980s, he built a powerful network that led him to control and mobilize the bases of the formation, especially in the Balearic capital.

“You have staged, an image is worth a thousand words, which are the same as always.

Linked to the worst history of this Autonomous Community ”the president of the Balearic Islands, Francina Armengol, has reproached this Tuesday during the plenary session of the Balearic Parliament, where she has insisted that the regional government has always staged“ being with the best of this society ” .

The party's campaign spokesman, Borja Sémper, and the president of the Balearic PP, Marga Prohens, agree that it was not "the best of decisions."

However, Prohens has insisted that there was no talk of electoral lists.

“I went to eat at a private house, although seeing the importance of an informal and private meal, it may not have been the best decision.

If I had known the importance it was going to acquire, I would not have gone, ”she added.

In statements to Channel 4 Television, Prohens has insisted that it was a meal in which people involved in the party "who wanted to eat with her because they did not know her" participated and that among those people was José María Rodríguez, of whom Prohens He has qualified that he is no longer part of the PP.

Criticism of the food with the condemned has intensified from the rest of the parties.

The PSIB has described the meeting as "very serious" and has asked Prohens to explain "if he has agreed with him on the electoral lists."

The Secretary of Organization of the PSIB, Cosme Bonet, has indicated that the PP of Matas and Rodríguez constitutes "a past of corruption, theft of public money and clientelism that would never have to return to the Islands."

The coordinator of Més per Mallorca and candidate for the regional government, Lluís Apesteguia, has accused Prohens not only of eating with a corrupt man "but that he does it to receive orders."

A conviction for embezzlement

Secretary general of the party in Palma, government delegate and Interior Minister during Matas' term, Rodríguez left politics in 2016 punctuated by the case that investigated alleged corruption in the Palma Local Police force, a piece derived from the Cursach

from which he was finally exonerated after the matter was diluted due to the investigation opened against the judge and the prosecutor who investigated him for alleged irregularities.

Rodríguez's role in the party has not been without scandal.

In 2010 he was investigated on suspicion that years before, when he was general secretary of the PP on the islands, he alerted the mayor of Andratx, Eugenio Hidalgo, that he was going to be arrested in an operation that uncovered a large corruption plot. urban.

The prosecution maintained that thanks to this supposed notice, Hidalgo had time to destroy evidence and files.

The prosecutors and civil guards who were investigating the

denounced his pressure and interference.

However, the matter that has led him to jail was uncovered in 2012 when the prosecution accused him of diverting public funds to the advertising agency that was in charge of the party's electoral campaigns.

The ex-politician was tried in a process in which the former Balearic president, Jaume Matas, admitted the facts and reached an agreement with the anti-corruption prosecutor's office, recognizing crimes of embezzlement and prevarication that led to a fine.

Rodríguez decided to go to trial and was sentenced by the Court of Palma in an opinion ratified by the Supreme Court, which rejected his appeal and sentenced him to three and a half years in prison for alleged crimes of prevarication, embezzlement of public funds and falsehood .

Rodríguez entered the Social Integration Center of Palma to serve his sentence and twelve days later he obtained the third degree, which allows him to enter jail only to sleep.

Currently, he is in third grade and took advantage of the day to celebrate lunch with fifty party officials.

The food of the PP leader of the islands and candidate for the Balearic Government has not gone down well in Genoa.

The party's campaign spokesman, Borja Sémper, stated that it was not "the best of decisions."

"Understand that I do not know the agenda of any leader, with whom he eats or with whom he has dinner, but the colleagues from the Balearic Islands have said that it was not the best of decisions, something that I adhere to," said Sémper.