Relatives of those who died in the fire at the Murcia nightclubs file a complaint against two councilors and three officials

The relatives of two of the 13 people who died on October 1 in the fire that destroyed two nightclubs in Murcia have filed a complaint this Tuesday against the current city Planning Councilor, Antonio Navarro (PP), his predecessor in the position, Andrés Guerrero (PSOE), and three City Council officials.

They are considered responsible for the tragedy because for years they allowed the damaged nightclubs to remain open despite the fact that they had numerous deficiencies in terms of safety and also a stoppage order in force.

The lawyer who represents them, José Manuel Muñoz Ortín, believes that they can be considered guilty of crimes of prevarication by omission and goes further: he denounces an “organized plot that allows this nightclub to operate continuously and irregularly since it began its activity.” , in the year 2008.

For the lawyer, who held a press conference accompanied by his clients, the entire administrative file related to the nightclubs, of some 1,800 pages, is riddled with irregularities that have persisted over time and had to be made known, and even promoted, by the two councilors (Navarro was in office between 2015 and 2021, and again from the municipal elections of May 2023, while Guerrero held it from March 2021 until the elections of May 2023), and also by the three officials against whom the complaint is directed: the inspector of the technical service of Works and Activities, the head of the Civil Protection and Fire Protection service and the head of the Intervention service.

In total, since the nightclub requested an activity license in 2005, until the day of the fire, October 1, 2023, around twenty resolutions were generated, of which three are orders to suspend and cease the activity, and another four are requests to initiate legalization procedures.

“The peculiarity in this case is that an activity has been maintained through legalization procedures.

If there was a complaint from the Local Police, if an irregularity was detected in the security protocols, if a sanction was issued, if the closure was decreed... then a legalization procedure was always opened that later remained without a resolution.

The procedure was opened to paralyze a sanction or suspension, but it never went further.

We are talking about eternal regularization,” explained the lawyer.

Muñoz Ortín has explained that the law contemplates requesting a legalization procedure in the event of an irregularity, but warns that this procedure must conclude and, if it does not do so and expires, as happened with the burned nightclubs, the cessation of activity must be automatic.

In this case, however, those and other files were allowed to expire without a response and without stopping the activity.

Furthermore, he has highlighted the “fraudulent” practice in which all legalization procedures were presented with the same documentation and repeating allegations that had already been previously rejected, which is why they should have been inadmissible.

The administrative file includes various resolutions opened at the request of the Local Police for non-compliance with security measures or capacity, but the room was only sanctioned on one occasion, with a fine of 250 euros for not having communicated a change of ownership.

The request to divide the industrial warehouse in which the two nightclubs were located into two was never granted, and was what led to the last of the closure orders being issued, which were never executed.

For the lawyer, this division generated deficiencies in security that were decisive in the deaths of the 13 victims of the fire, since the evacuation measures at Fonda Milagros were almost non-existent: its emergency doors did not face the street, but rather the the other nightclub, Teatre, where the police locate the origin of the fire.

The Fonda box area, where all the people died, only had a single exit, and its evacuation routes had distances that exceeded 36 meters, when the maximum allowed by law is 25 meters.

Despite this, the nightclub continued to operate, as did Teatre, where already in 2017 the file reflects an inspection in which it was found that its emergency exits were blocked, a deficiency that was not corrected and for which the firefighters They realized the day of the fire.

This maintenance of all the irregularities over the years is what leads Muñoz Ortín to speak of an “organized plot.”

In his opinion, councilor Antonio Navarro “developed regulations that allowed this administrative operation,” and his successor, Andrés Guerrero, although he issued the last of the closure orders, which was still in force at the time of the fire, included in it a clause which invalidated the order itself, since it gave rise to being able to keep the room operating with a new legalization procedure.

The three officials, for their part, also let the serious infractions that affected security pass without taking action.

The Murcia City Council has issued a statement to remind that these same victims have already requested the investigating court number 3, which is investigating the case, to open a separate piece to resolve these responsibilities, something that was denied by its owner.

Muñoz Ortín has pointed out that these proceedings were requested when the parties had not yet had access to the administrative file and, therefore, had not been argued with a documentary base that they do have now, which is why they have decided to raise this new complaint.

So far, in the case opened by the fire, which investigates 13 possible homicides due to recklessness, there are six people under investigation: the owner of Fonda Milagros, three people in charge of Teatre, in addition to the DJ who organized the party that was held that night and the owner of the cold fire machine that police believe was the source of the fire.

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