A policeman only against corruption: « I am indicated, but I would do it again » | Spain

Antonio Rico, 49 -year -old local police, asks to tell his story positive. The life of a man who always wanted to devote himself to public service and who seemed normal Torrevieja (Alicante, 89,290 inhabitants), such as that the fines of the fines were not controlled or that repeated inspections were carried out to some no others. These complaints have put their lives up in the last 12 years for the work persecution he suffered and the stigma he has assumed in his professional work. He is happy that the Constitutional Court recognized on February 10 that the Torrevieja City Council He must have protected him from the harassment to which he was subjected after denouncing these irregularities, But it is difficult for him to see him as a final victory. « I am in a loop, trapped, marked and indicated wherever I go, » he summarizes.

The rich agent, who now works in the Local Police of Murcia, has not brought the uniform to the interview because they have not authorized it. Sitting in a cafeteria close to the headquarters of the Constitutional Court, in Madrid, he acknowledges that it affects him to recall and give details of what he lived in Torrevieja, a municipality he reached in 2010 and who had affection for the good memories of the summers in his childhood. He is accompanied by Luis Gonzalo Segura, expelled from the Army a decade ago after publishing a novel about military corruption, which he admires and points out as one of his great support and inspiration during these years.

« When you see high -end cars, complaints of complaints that are not controlled, which are paid in hand, or send you several times to the same establishment, on followed nights, in a place where there was nothing to denounce, because you think it is not normal, » he argues. Some of these facts made them known to the Chief of Police, who told him to go to the courts « if he had evidence of something. » He did it in 2013, along with two other companions. « At the time you are going to report, you do not know the magnitude of the reprisals, » says the rich agent. « This is done simply because you feel that what you are doing is your duty. » Once in judicial headquarters, he says that he was asked if he was sure or if he had « a plan B ». « I have always thought that I would go well, I have always trusted justice, » he adds.

Among that perception that everything would go well and the recognition of the harassment he suffered later has passed more than a decade in which he has come to all possible instances to show what happened to him next. Remember that just when he left the courts of Torrevieja, a partner called him to tell him that since his leadership they had asked him about details of his personal life, related to his partner, the place where he lived, or the school center to which he took his children. It was the beginning.

The Constitutional has declared a judgment of the Contentious-Administrative Court of Elche in which it is recognized that the Rich Agent suffered workplace harassment « for years » propitiated and implemented by the command positions of the Local Police of Torrevieja and condemns the City Council to compensate for not having prevented the moral damage that these behaviors caused him. The first compensation was 95,800 euros. In that sentence, testimonies are collected from colleagues who assured that they insulted him almost daily in front of the whole world, which was called « chivato, viscous and disgusting animal » in a pamphlet that accused him of thinking every day « who was going to report »; And other examples, such as that they made him go back to the medical review to drive because the local police chief reported that he could have lost the powers, or that his weapon was withdrawn from an under -key harmonic without following the legal procedure. Also changes of workday without warning, deny the extraordinary pay or school aid. « He was denied anything he systematically requested, » said one of the witnesses.

When he asked to be transferred to another municipality, he also found a wall, still protected by a medical diagnosis for the psychological disorder that this situation was producing. They only granted the change when advised by a report from the Legal Council of the Generalitat Valenciana, which has an advisory function. He spent almost seven years in Torrevieja. « Those who should have been the best in my life became a path of thorns to the edge of the abyss, » he adds.

« The end they had was to discredit me, suffocate me economically and force me to claudicate, or expel me with dishonor, » he says about what happened in Torrevieja. From that experience, he claims to have entered a kind of loop in which he must always be on guard in case they try to harm him. « The image you carry is negative. ‘Be careful, that this person is a complainant, » he says. “Neither to have recognized the status of the complainant of corruption by the Valencian Antifraude Agency, nor the protection that Law 2/2023 (that protects corruption complainants) leaves us free to continue suffering atrocities or reprisals. ”

After leaving Torrevieja has passed through the Murcian municipalities of Alcigazas (10,204 inhabitants) and Lorca (98,447 inhabitants), whose local police have worked four years. There he received a silver medal for police merit for an action in which an individual who had frightened the neighborhood was taken from a catana. Now he performs his work in Murcia. He has successfully opposed the Local Police again up to two more occasions. He says he wants to remain a local agent. « Mine is vocational, I was already clear with 16 years, » he says with glassy eyes.

When he thought that everything had ended, he was surprised to hear the police councilor of the City Council of Torrevieja, Federico Alarcón, who was not part of the PP government when his case occurred, saying that a possible appeal in European justice occurred. « They lost the opportunity to apologize to all the agents who have been harassed and say that the sanctioning regime against the agents responsible for these practices was going to be applied, » he laments. It also see that there are no political responsibilities. « Where is the Ethical Code of the PP that keeps my harassment in its ranks as if nothing had happened? » He asks. Rico cites other colleagues who, like him, were dedicated to request transfers, or ended up incapacitated by the harassment they had to live and ended up permanently incapacitated.

« No one is prepared to pass the ordeal that collects the judgment of the Constitutional and the personal sacrifice that this entails (…) to a person who is considering denouncing a corrupt behavior would tell him to collect evidence of everything because the complainant is unprotected, who would be advised well before starting the way, because it is not easy, and there are many things that should be improved to be able to do so without leaving the complainant.

The rich agent coincides with the former Lieutenant Safe that the anonymity for a complainant is « a utopia. » He himself had to present himself as a particular accusation in the complaint of irregularities, for which some of his colleagues helped him to pay the judicial bond imposed as a personation, and that ended with the sentence to imprisonment of an inspector for infidelity in the custody of documents in 2023. “The agencies that protect the complainants should be those who exercise the legal actions,” he considers.

Rico is a delegate in the union we are trade unionists of Murcia, and is currently studying a superior university course in legal-labor advice, a training with which he seeks to give a better service to his companions of the City Council. « I want to really help you, » he says. « Many people ask me for help, they write to me by asking me about their problems. What has happened to me (the resolution of the Constitutional Court recognizing their helpless) can serve many people who are in the well, so that they see that in the end justice is done, » he values.

Its list of thanks is extensive, but it cannot be missing, its lawyer, Vanesa Aguaza, responsible for taking its case to the Constitutional, and also Valencia Anti -Fraud Agency, in which it still has a protected complainant status, so it receives legal protection and advice. Would you report again? « If you ask me a few years ago I would say no. But as I said before, I am a vocational police, I would do it without hesitation. »