Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo recognized through notes made in his agendas in September 2014 that the lending a hand to the former president of the Community of Madrid Esperanza Aguirre in relation to her traffic incident on Madrid’s Gran Vía, when in April of that year he parked his vehicle in the bus lane of the central avenue to access a nearby ATM.
Aguirre finished immersed in legal proceedings for what happened with her vehicle, given that she chose to escape from the place where the offense was committed despite the fact that she had been stopped by mobility agents and was accused, among other things, of disobedience. The popular accusation then –whose lawyer was going to question her- exercised by the association Transparency and Justicebehind which was precisely the controversial commissioner.
According to the comments that Villarejo wrote about the matter in his notebooks, he sent the president the questions that this accusation was going to ask her in court, so that she could play with an advantage. And he did it, according to his version, with the help of a friendly judge. “You received the questions. Espe topic”, noted on September 19 of that year, while he was referring to the then dean judge of Madrid, Jose Luis Gonzalez Armengol who, according to what he indicates, acted as an intermediary between the two.
In fact, Villarejo’s personal notes, to which El Periódico de España, a newspaper of the same group, Prensa Ibérica, which this newspaper has had access, detail how throughout the month of September 2014 the aforementioned judge tried to favor the PP leader. “He wants us to help the ESP at all costs. He’s meeting her in an hour. I promised to help her.”
At that time the case that affected the former president of Madrid was in the Court of Instruction number 14 of Madrid and, despite the fact that the Prosecutor’s Office did not accuse, they promoted the case one of the mobility agents affected as a private prosecution and the then unknown Transparency and Justice Association, as a popular action. It so happens that this association was controlled by Villarejo himself, according to the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. The questions that this part asked became important on that date for Aguirre’s appearance before the judge, set for September 23, 2014.
Restless at the funeral
A few days before the scheduled appearance, on the 15th of that month of September, Villarejo made a new entry in his diary in relation to this matter, stating that Aguirre “still restless” and that this was stated to González Armengol when both coincided in the funeral for the former president of the English Court Isidoro Álvarez. “I reassure him,” he says about his conversation with the dean of the Madrid judges, which eldiario.es advanced.
Two days later, Villarejo returns to point out on this issue that “I hope good results”. It was on the 21st, two days before his appearance before the judge, when he notes that González Armengol had already received the questions so that Aguirre could more calmly face his appearance in the Madrid courts. “We agree to be pending evolution “Add.
The rest of the notes on this matter allude to how grateful the former Madrid president would be with the Police Commissioner. This is emphasized even on the eve of the declaration, on September 22: “Armengol: He says that Espe is very grateful for the treatment given in the appearance. He proposes to see us when the topic is over.”
This good deal was publicly recognized by Aguirre herself years later, specifically on September 20, 2018, when everyone already knew who the commissioner was and his problems with the law. “I met him, Mr. Villarejo, without knowing who he was. They told me he was the president of Transparency and Justice, an association that had appealed against the exoneration that the judge gave me when I stopped in a bus lane to withdraw money at an ATM, wanted to talk to me,” he admitted to several media outlets, according to Eph.
At that time, he admitted that she asked him why Transparency and Justice appealed against her, to which the former commissioner, according to the former president’s version, replied: “Because they told me that Esperanza Aguirre had to be scared. Yes , but I think that we are not going to do anything else”. “When I arrived at the trial, the lawyer for Transparency and Justice did not intervene at all and he didn’t ask for anything,” Aguirre said.
Finally, in January 2015, the Court agreed to the provisional dismissal and the filing of the case at not having been “sufficiently accredited the disobedience and injuries due to recklessness” that were initially attributed to Aguirre. A few weeks before this file, at the beginning of December, Villarejo and Armengol met to talk about this issue and others that interested them both and had to do with another judge of the Madrid courts of Plaza de Castilla, Fermín Echarri. But before they commented on Aguirre, even acknowledging that the commissioner’s intervention in this matter had “come in handy”, according to a audio of the conversation to which this newspaper has had access.
“I hadn’t seen him, but he tells me (alluding to Aguirre) ‘it’s that they took me out in ‘El Confidencial ‘or I don’t know what’, which had been made with the recordings of the chillies”, affirms the judge, who then describes the news as “bullshit”, because it is nothing more than a recording of “how the guy talks with the station, hear that Esperanza Aguirre has left us, bullshit of these”.
“The judge is going to make the resolution”
Next, they comment that, since the Aguirre incident is a misdemeanor trial, the judge “is going to issue the resolution immediately.” González Armengol then asks the police if the judge had verbally consulted them about a new challenge, to which Villarejo answers in the affirmative.
“Yes, the lawyer has been there, the secretary called him and the judge himself told him, what are you going to do, don’t pull my ear again, I don’t know what. And no, Your Honor, we totally agree with you. Well, we could have saved this. You are absolutely right, Your Honor, but… “. The policeman explains to his interlocutor, who replies, laughing, that “well, it has come in handy”, the matter “has been a fucking mother”. He adds, referring to the president of the PP in Madrid: “Fuck that besides a lesson of this…”. “…Not bad”, complete the commissioner.