The "Florentino" of Junts who tolerates a nazi concert and did not cede spaces for the 1-O

BarcelonaJoan Campolier (Santa Susanna, 1950) has justified that his town hosts for the fourth consecutive year in two weekends' time a Nazi festival because it is a "private party" and that the City Council "can do nothing about it". The anti-fascist groups that demonstrated on Friday and the opposition parties do not think the same, who denounce that once again the mayor of this municipality in Maresme has not sought a way to prevent it. "It is held on non-developable land, it can be considered a rave and groups that glorify Nazism perform when legislation persecutes it," replies the opposition leader, the republican Jordi Cusachs, who considers that "the council has a lot to say about it".

This latest controversy does not fail to exemplify, in his opinion, how the coalition mayor, who governs with an absolute majority, is: "He is like Florentino Pérez: he manages the town as if it were his own, he does not tolerate dissent and he experiences any criticism as a personal attack". The rest of the forces in the council also criticize his authoritarianism and that he does not hold informative commissions, that he calls plenary sessions at midday or from one day to the next, or that he has approved the new POUM without talking to the opposition. Mayor since the first democratic elections, he only left office from 2007 to 2011 and was forced to do so by a court ruling.

The Court of Appeal sentenced him to 8 years and 7 months of disqualification for a crime of prevarication for awarding the municipal pavilion project to the municipal architect without following the legal procedure, but the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero partially pardoned him and reduced the sentence by half. This has not been the only legal case he has had to face, and he is now involved in two more: one for spying on a police officer and his wife, a former PP councilwoman, and another for a complaint from the CUP for discharging groundwater into the sea without authorization.

In a municipality with 4,000 inhabitants and 17,000 hotel beds, Campolier has always put the economy above all else. A friend of King Juan Carlos I, he avoided confrontational speeches with the State during the peak years of the Procés. He wanted to preserve the tourist brand of the municipality, which also receives thousands of Spanish visitors, and he called for coexistence and dialogue. In fact, from ERC they recall that on October 1st he refused to cede the civic center, where all the votes are cast, and the referendum was held at the Institut Escola Montagut, owned by the Generalitat. "He went to vote and left, he didn't stand guard, even though the Civil Guard was in the surrounding towns," emphasizes Cusachs.