The Public Prosecutor was far from happy when the Málaga Court No15 basically let the Mayor of Nerja and his councillors off the hook over the illegal dump in Río de Miel.

Consequently, he lodged an appeal in June 2023 before the Provincial High Court, recommending 2-years imprisonment and 18 months barred from office for Mayor, José Alberto Armijo (PP).

Now, four months later the said Provincial High Court has rejected the Public Prosecutor’s appeal. It also rejected his call for a retrial, but it did order the judge in the original court to reexamine, in its totality, the evidence and to dictate a new findings.

In other words, although there would be no retrial, all the evidence presented during the original trial is to be re-evaluated by the same judge and new findings handed down.

Mayor Almijo, who was in power in Nerja from 1995 and 2015, and now since 2019, said, “I trust and hope that after this evaluation of all the evidence that the magistrate will carry out, she will return another acquittal.”

The Public Prosecutor who deals with Environmental issues, Fernando Benítez, upon being asked for his opinion by the provincial press, said, “I have no knowledge of the [High Court] findings; I haven’t been informed.” He went on to say that if there has to be another evaluation of all the evidence and a new finding, he would be satisfied: “It is what I requested; the previous findings annulled and a new sentence.”

The illegal dump in question was operative 18 years, not only under the very nose of the Town Hall, but also the site was used by the Town Hall itself to dump rubble from public construction work.

During those 18 years a total of 800,000 cubic metres were deposited in this area of the Natural Park of Sierras Tejeda, Almijara y Alhama. In the end, the Junta de Andalucía removed the rubbish and restored the area to its natural state, which cost 1.6m euros… using EU funds.

In other words, the alleged culprits; i.e., the passiveness of the Town Hall towards the problem and the construction companies that used the dump, didn’t go to jail nor have to pay a penny – the European Union picked up the bill.

You can read up more on this affair in an article that we published in 2019.

(News: Nerja, Axarquia, Costa del Sol, Malaga, Andalucia)

Keywords: Illegal Dump, Mayor of Nerja, Armijo, TSJA, Provincial Court, New Evaluation of Evidence, New Findings.