The Alicante Provincial Court has convicted former Orihuela mayor Mónica Lorente and eight other defendants in the main Brugal corruption case, which examined alleged irregularities in the awarding of the city’s street cleaning and waste collection contract.
In a ruling that partially overturns an earlier acquittal, the court has sentenced nine of the 33 defendants to prison terms ranging from four months to three years and nine months. The decision follows a Supreme Court order requiring the Provincial Court to issue a new judgment after validating evidence previously ruled inadmissible.
Lorente, who served as mayor between 2007 and 2011, was sentenced to four months in prison for malfeasance in concurrence with fraud. Former councillors Antonio Rodríguez, Manuel Abadía and Ginés Sánchez received prison sentences of four months, five months and one year respectively.
Also convicted were the former municipal auditor, José Manuel Espinosa, who was sentenced to eight months in prison, and businessman Ángel Fenoll, owner of Proambiente SL and Colsur SL, whose combined sentences total three years and nine months. Fenoll’s son was sentenced to one year in prison, while two coworkers received sentences of four and eight months respectively.
The ruling, which was notified to the parties on Monday and can be appealed again to the Supreme Court, also obliges five of the nine convicted parties (Mónica LR, Ángel FP, Francisco Javier BG, Antonio RM and Ginés SL) to jointly and severally compensate the Orihuela City Council with almost 600,000 euros, as well as the amount that is definitively set in another judicial proceeding by an Administrative Court of Elche.
Among those acquitted is José Manuel Medina, who was also mayor of Orihuela during the period under investigation.
The ruling marks the second judgment issued by the Alicante Provincial Court in the case concerning the waste management contract awarded by the Orihuela City Council. In the first judgment, delivered in 2020, all defendants were acquitted after wiretaps and searches were declared invalid. That decision was overturned by the High Court in July 2024, which upheld the legality of the evidence and ordered a fresh assessment.
The new judgment was drafted by judges José Teófilo Jiménez and Gracia Serrano after the magistrate who authored the original ruling was unable to participate due to medical leave.
In its decision, the Supreme Court upheld the police investigation and criticised the earlier exclusion of evidence, stating that it lacked a “logical and rational basis” and violated the prosecution’s right to effective judicial protection. The court ruled that a retrial was unnecessary, noting that the defendants had already presented their defence and that video recordings and extensive documentation mitigated the passage of time since the alleged events, which date back more than two decades.
The case concerns events between 2000 and 2008, when the Orihuela City Council, then governed by the People’s Party (PP), awarded the waste collection contract to a consortium later known as UTE Orihuela Capital de la Vega Baja. Prosecutors initially accused the defendants of offences including fraud, abuse of power, bribery, influence peddling and illicit association, seeking sentences of up to 38 years in prison.
Lorente and Fenoll are also implicated in other branches of the Brugal investigation, including a case relating to the Vega Baja waste treatment plant, which is still pending a Supreme Court ruling. A further Brugal-related case concerning waste management in Calp, in which several defendants were acquitted, is also awaiting a final decision from the country’s highest court.
