After a hearing of almost ten hours peppered with many fights - albeit in a friendly tone - from the judge, José Antonio Vázquez-Taín, who ironic about the political burden of the trial, the case regarding the works carried out in the Pita de Betanzos house was heard. The Xunta's lawyer dropped all the charges and two of the accused officials were also acquitted.
The prosecutor in the case requested an optional sentence: either for a crime against the planning of the territory, or for another against the historical heritage, which would imply a type of special trespass typified in articles 320 and 322 of the Penal Code and which determine prison sentences up to three years. The lawyers of the two private accusations - the one brought by the industrialist José Rivera and the PP betanceiro - toughened up this request, ensuring that the former socialist mayor, Manuel Lagares, and his government team prevaricated and had "the necessary collaboration" of some officials of the City Council. These requests can translate into sentences of one year in prison and seven years of disqualification from holding public office.
The defense requested free acquittal and insisted that the former Brigantine councilor; his brother and current councilor Antonio Lagares; the councilors Francisco Díaz and José Ramón Díaz; as well as the former councilors Asunción Sánchez and José Ramón Carro, granted a license for the developer Urbanizaciones Betanzos to work in the Pita house based on what was indicated in their respective reports by the municipal secretary, the controller and the surveyor.
Conclusions
All the politicians repeated that they did not read the reports cover to cover, but the last lines in which the conclusions were drawn. Thus, the interrogations focused for many hours on the interpretation of the words of the technicians and on minor issues, such as the way in which the Xunta sent the communications warning that the work had to be stopped.
The former delegate of the Department of Culture in the city had to dedicate a good part of her speech to justify that she had the receipt of each of the communications that she sent to the Betanceiras municipal offices, because the defense wielded that they had never received them.
In interpreting the report on the project presented by the architect of the work, Alfonso Lage, the parties did not agree either. The letter states “that it would be absurd to allow a demolition of the building”, as happened with one of the facades and the entire interior, but it also states that “if the object of the license was allowed, a qualitative step would be taking a restoration to a restructuring ”, which for the complainants has meant the end of an emblematic house for Betanzos.
"The current house has nothing to do with the previous one," declared the former popular councilor, Xaime Pita, who also stressed that there was no reason to go beyond a rehabilitation, since this property is protected and was not in danger of ruin, as claimed by the promoter in the second of the projects presented. "People lived regularly in the house, even though the owners were scattered around the world," he said.
A theory that the current mayor subscribed, the popular María Faraldo, assuring that she visited the house shortly before its sale. He also recalled a commission in which the architect Andrés Fernández Albalat, one of the authors of the Betanzos special plan, explained to them the inadmissibility of the works that were proposed for the Pita house and that they ended up being done. "In that commission nothing was authorized," repeated the mayor, despite some documents wielded by the defense.
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