José Ignacio Landaluce has entrenched himself in the Mayor's Office of Algeciras and even threatens to present an independent candidacy if the PP dispenses with him in the next municipal elections, scheduled for May 2027. The one who has been a senator in the last legislature and governs in Algeciras with a resounding absolute majority is not willing to resign or step aside despite the trickle of accusations he has received in recent months for alleged sexual abuse of several women of your environment.
The last complaint that has been made public was filed by a member of the Popular Party in the Supreme Court on September 2, as reported yesterday by the newspaper Europa Sur and EL MUNDO has been able to confirm it from judicial sources. At the moment, the process is in a very initial phase waiting for the Prosecutor's Office to decide if it sees evidence of a crime and if it considers the Supreme Court competent, since Landaluce stopped being a senator after the dissolution of the Cortes and the calling of general elections last Monday.
But the information has fallen like a bomb on the Algeciras City Council and on the PP of Cádiz, which has not just broken ties with what has been one of its references in the province in the last 15 years.
Landaluce obtained 53.14% of the votes in Algeciras in the 2023 elections. This very broad support helped the PP to obtain 14 seats in the Provincial Council of Cádiz and snatch the presidency from the PSOE (which also obtained 14 deputies) after an agreement with the party of the mayor of La Línea, Juan Franco, who obtained 2 deputies. IU obtained a single deputy. The relationship of forces is, therefore, very tight and losing the Mayor's Office of Algeciras due to a hypothetical fracture of the municipal group would put the provincial hegemony of the Popular Party at risk.
Landaluce left the party at her own request after another previous complaint filed by the Socialist Party of Cádiz in the Supreme Court in which screenshots of WhatsApp conversations were provided in which several women from the municipal group of the PP supposedly talked about the abuses suffered and pointed out the mayor as a sexual harasser. The alleged victims publicly denied the facts and the Prosecutor's Office ended up filing the case. Subsequently, EL MUNDO learned that the Andalusian PP had promised not to place him again at the head of its candidacy in Algeciras after receiving several complaints in the Senate about his sexist behavior.
EL MUNDO then published that the PP was looking for a replacement for Landaluce and had no intention of reinstating him into the party. However, he neither asked him to resign as mayor nor demanded that his councilors withdraw their confidence in him in the municipal plenary session. In fact, Landaluce is still today a mayor who is not a member of the PP but has a municipal group with 15 PP councilors.
The fear of provoking a schism in the municipal group and Landaluce's threats against anyone who contributes to giving credibility to the accusations have led his political circle to remain at his side, although several sources consulted by EL MUNDO assure that the municipal group is divided between those who continue to support him and those who are hoping that the PP will definitively break relations with him because they give credibility to the reported facts.
According to the information published by Europa Sur, in the complaint filed with the Supreme Court, the PP activist claims that the mayor touched her on two occasions: the first, in December 2020, during a visit to the medical center that Landaluce owns, and the second, in City Hall offices, in April 2021.
The complaint also points to a possible crime against the Public Administration since Landaluce would have offered the complainant a job so that she would not tell what happened.
The PP of Cádiz, chaired by the mayor of the capital, Bruno García, has asked Landaluce to "give explanations" for the complaints received although, for now, the party has not wanted to say what measures it will take in the future or whether it will ask its councilors to withdraw confidence in it, as demanded by the opposition groups.
