A call from Rubén Viñuales to a drug dealer triggers controversy: the Mossos believe he wanted to buy drugs

TarragonaOn June 23, 2017, twenty minutes past 12 noon, Rubén Viñuales, then a lawyer and councilor for Ciutadans at the Tarragona City Council, held a phone call that this Friday has sparked controversy in the city. The portal Portaenrere.cat has transcribed the call, which is included in the summary of a drug trafficking case currently being tried at the Tarragona Provincial Court, and has collected the testimony of the Mossos sergeant who led the investigation. On Wednesday, as judicial sources confirmed to ARA, the officer explained to the court that from the conversation between Viñuales and the drug dealer, it could be interpreted that the now socialist mayor of Tarragona intended to buy drugs. The mayor has reacted through a statement on Instagram denying "categorically" this interpretation and justifying that the call was made because he was acting as his interlocutor's lawyer.

In the transcription of the call, collected by Portaenrere.cat, the Mossos explain that Viñuales tells his interlocutor that he is calling "for recreational and festive matters, that he has to go to a wedding and that he has to catch a plane immediately." "From the analysis of the call, it is inferred that the user of the phone requests a narcotic substance from the accused because he has to go to a wedding and has to catch a plane, but the accused, in the same line of argument as other previous calls and following the arrest of V.D., refuses to talk about issues related to drug trafficking over the phone," is described in the summary. V.D. is the nickname of another person arrested for drug trafficking a few months earlier. Precisely, his arrest is pointed to as key to reaching the arrest of the main accused in the trial being held in Tarragona. The Mossos who testified on Wednesday highlighted that it was common for "euphemisms" to be found in the conversations to refer to drugs to avoid being caught.

The mayor of Tarragona has announced that he will initiate legal action against the author of the report, the journalist Rafa Marrasé. Viñuales is not under investigation in the trial and his name appears, in fact, collaterally, in the transcripts of the case's phone calls that the Mossos considered "relevant" at the time.

"The facts date back to 2017 and the reproduced conversation took place within the framework of the professional relationship he maintained as a lawyer with this person, whose defense and various legal matters he had assumed," says Viñuales, who adds that "the connection of this conversation with an alleged request for narcotic substances responds exclusively to an interpretation that the investigating agents made at that time and which I do not share at all." In fact, Viñuales recalls that the investigating judge did not share that interpretation and, therefore, he was not investigated "nor summoned to testify, not even as a witness."

The news broke while the plenary session of the Tarragona Provincial Council was underway, where Viñuales is vice president. This Friday, moreover, the Innova case of alleged corruption has also begun to be tried at the Tarragona Provincial Court, in which the former mayor of the city, Josep Félix Ballesteros, is accused. And all this comes in the midst of the Santa Tecla festival.