the PSOE’s reaction to the Brugal verdict in Orihuela — demanding political accountability from the Partido Socialista Obrero Español’s rivals in the Partido Popular and calling for reparations for the “serious damage caused to the city” — is not merely unconvincing, it is symptomatic of a deeper and more corrosive failure in local governance: the illusion that responsibility lies solely with elected officials, while the permanent machinery of power remains untouched.
There is no dispute about the gravity of the Brugal case. The conviction of former mayor Mónica Lorente marks one of the most damaging episodes in Orihuela’s recent history.
It exposed how procurement, waste management, and political influence became entwined in ways that hollowed out public trust. The damage — reputational, administrative, and moral — is real and lasting.
But the PSOE’s attempt to present itself as the moral arbiter of this collapse rings hollow, not simply because of its own historical baggage, but because it misdiagnoses the problem.
The core issue is not only partisan corruption. It is structural impunity.
Orihuela is not governed primarily by politicians, nor even by business elites, but by a self-preserving bureaucratic ecosystem that outlives elections, scandals, and court rulings.
Senior officials rotate portfolios, reports are buried, procedures are weaponised, and responsibility dissolves into “technical compliance.” Political figures fall; the administrative apparatus does not.
Yet the PSOE’s response focuses exclusively on party labels, as if removing one set of elected actors would cleanse a system that has demonstrably learned how to protect itself.
This selective framing mirrors a broader credibility problem. The PSOE cannot plausibly invoke accountability as a moral absolute while treating it as a partisan instrument.
Voters in Orihuela are not afflicted with political amnesia. They remember Andalucía’s ERE scandal, Filesa, PSPV financing investigations, and repeated episodes where ethical standards were preached loudly and applied narrowly.
When a party with this history demands reparations from its opponents without acknowledging its own failures, the message is not justice — it is choreography.
This does not absolve the PP. The Brugal case remains a profound breach of public trust. But reducing it to a party-political morality play is a disservice to the city.
Corruption on this scale does not thrive on ideology; it thrives on administrative opacity, procedural capture, and institutional silence. None of those are meaningfully addressed by press statements demanding compensation.
The call for reparations is particularly revealing. If political parties are to compensate cities for the damage caused under their watch, then the principle must be universal.
Yet the PSOE has never proposed such accountability for its own record elsewhere. The standard appears only when it is electorally useful — and disappears when introspection is required.
This asymmetry corrodes public faith. When anti-corruption language becomes a tactical weapon rather than a shared civic commitment, citizens disengage. They stop believing that accountability will ever reach beyond the sacrificial politician to the offices, departments, and officials that enabled the misconduct.
Orihuela deserves more than this cycle of accusation and amnesia. It needs administrative reform, transparent procurement, independent oversight, and a reckoning with how power actually operates inside the town hall.
The PSOE could have used the Brugal verdict to demand precisely that: a cross-party, system-wide response aimed at dismantling the conditions that allowed corruption to flourish.
Instead, it chose the safer path of partisan reproach.
Until political actors — PSOE included — are willing to confront not just who governed, but how governance itself has been distorted and protected from scrutiny, their condemnations will continue to sound hollow.
The Brugal case is a stain on Orihuela’s history. Treating it as a party talking point rather than an institutional failure risks ensuring it will not be the last.
