The Junts Florentine who tolerates a Nazi concert and did not yield spaces for 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". The anti-fascist groups that held a demonstration 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 act when legislation pursues it," retorts the head of the opposition and spokesperson for a coalition that includes ERC, Jordi Cusachs, who believes that "the council has a lot to say".

This last controversy does not stop exemplifying, in his opinion, how the ruling mayor is, who governs with an absolute majority: "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 consulting 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 the 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 judicial case he has had to face, and he is now involved in another for spying on a police officer and his wife, a former PP councilor.

In a municipality with 4,000 inhabitants and 17,000 hotel places, Campolier has always put the economy ahead of everything. 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 municipality's tourist brand, which also receives thousands of Spanish visitors, and called for coexistence and dialogue. In fact, from ERC they recall that on October 1st he refused to hand over 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 villages," emphasizes Cusachs.