The court of first instance and instruction number 3 of Ávila has called the mayor of Vita (Ávila, 79 inhabitants) to testify for chants of pedophile content that he did at the town festivals last summer. The councilor, Antonio Martín Hernández, of the PP until the party expelled him after learning the facts, must appear before the judge on May 19 of next year. Martín is no longer in the PP but is still mayor, after another popular councilor refused to second a motion of censure against him. This second mayor He was also expelled from the training.
According to the judge’s ruling, reported by Efe, “the facts present characteristics that suggest the possible existence of a crime of corruption of minors.” The events to which he alludes took place on August 25 during the patron saint festivities of San Bartolo in the town of Vita. There, up on the stage where festivals or plays are usually performed, Martín sang a song that included verses of a pedophile nature, as it jokingly alluded to sexual relations with minors. The mayor urged the public to chant the following verses: “I put her in my bed, I raised her skirt, I lowered her panties. I gave him the first caliqueño. I added the second caliqueño. In the third there was no milk left.”
One person recorded the chant, that went viral on social networks and prompted the reaction of various political agents, from local and regional officials to members of the Government such as Sira Rego, Minister of Youth. The complaint against the mayor came from the ultra-Catholic Christian Lawyers association, which reported a possible crime of incitement to pedophilia and another of sexual provocation.
The PP immediately announced the expulsion of the mayor from the party, although this does not imply that Martín loses the mayor’s office: he continues to occupy it as an independent. An eventual dismissal would depend on the success of a motion of censure against him, but the other PP councilor, Raúl Blázquez, refused to support that initiative. Blázquez was also subsequently expelled, and therefore both local politicians continue to rule the town as independents.
“Given the situation, given the impossibility of reaching an understanding to articulate the censorship, and since no one can be withdrawn – except through judicial means – an act of a democratically elected representative, be it a councilor or any other type, we accept that Blázquez, together with the mayor, assume the personal, political and management responsibility of the Consistory outside of our initials,” the provincial PP said in a statement.
