Salamanca (EFE).- The mayor of Salamanca, Carlos García Carbayo (PP), has dismissed the Councilor for Tourism, Fernando Castaño (Cs), on Monday for the fiasco of the urban project to turn Salamanca into a small Dubai.
“Taking into account that Castaño himself made his position available to the mayor, García Carbayo has decided to do without him within the government team, after the controversy surrounding the hiring of the already former adviser on strategic projects, investments and internationalization”, The City Council has indicated this Monday in a press release.
Castaño had made his position available to the mayor after the frauds related to a project of which he was the main political promoter came to light. Last Friday, Cs sources assured EFE that the councilor would not resign.
Castaño was a friend of José María Fuentes, the external adviser who in 2020 won a municipal contract of 47,400 euros per year, VAT not included, to attract investment to the city with a false degree in Economics.
The mayor of Salamanca, Carlos García Carbayo (PP), publicly reproached the councilor for this relationship. The condition that he put to keep him in office after uncovering the situation was “absolute disassociation with that fake friend of his”, something that Castaño did last Friday.
However, the mayor has decided to dismiss him: «Today I have asked the Councilor for Citizens Fernando Castaño to present his resignation. Regardless of what you decide to do with his minutes, I withdraw the delegations of Tourism and Relations with Universities », the mayor announced on his Twitter account.
Castaño was slow to deny his friend the adviser
For several days last week, Castaño remained silent and did not dissociate himself from Fuentes. “He insists that all this is a hunt against that adviser,” the mayor explained on Thursday in an interview on Onda Cero Salamanca.
However, on Friday, in a statement included in a note from the City Council, Castaño agreed to distance himself from Fuentes to continue in office. “I feel deeply cheated by the adviser’s intolerable and irresponsible conduct,” he said.
Consulted by Efe, Castaño has preferred not to give statements in this regard for the moment. He has not appeared in public events either and his assistance has even been canceled in some calls in which he was announced.
There is also no news from Fuentes, who has been denounced by both the City Council and the University of Salamanca (USAL) for presenting a false university degree. And it remains to be clarified if he was, as it seems, an adviser to the City Council and a representative of the British company Peace City World at the same time.
As Efe has been able to confirm, since 2020 Fuentes has been meeting with companies as a representative of Peace City World, the company born in 2019 that supposedly wanted to turn Salamanca into a “little Dubai” with millions of dollars from sheikhs and other investors.
The macro-project for Salamanca -with chairlift, tram and luxury hotels- continues to appear on the company’s website, despite the fact that the City Council has announced that it has broken the collaboration protocol that it had signed with the company less than fifteen days ago.
