Walter Finch
FOR decades he’s been the ‘teflon mayor’, for whom tales of dodgy dealings and questionable connections would never stick.
But sexual allegations of dirty weekends, suspect ‘work trips’ to Germany and midnight demands to join him at his castle swingers parties in Monda just might.
These are just some of the sleazy claims emerging against Jose Maria Garcia Urbano in the most salacious political corruption scandal to hit Andalucia for years.
As reported in the Olive Press a fortnight ago, the PP mayor of Estepona has been accused of abusing a male police officer during a near-two-year ordeal.
Aside from allegedly forcing the town hall employee into degrading sex acts, the politician also insisted his wife occasionally watched.
Amid a long list of lurid claims, the denuncia being probed by Estepona’s Court Number 5 will see the mayor in court on November 18 next week.
His victim gave evidence on Friday, reiterating his claims and adding he has video evidence, witnesses and documents to back them up.
The judge must now establish if the cop, who joined the town’s force in 2022 and is now on ‘mental health leave’, was forced to effectively work as a male prostitute for his overlord.
And so began a national media scramble to shine a light on Urbano with a string of claims emerging – including including multi-million euro projects handed to his family, claims about links to Nazi sympathisers, and his dubious rise up the ladder alongside the controversial regime of disgraced former Marbella mayor Jesus Gil.
But firstly we need to rewind 13 years to 2011, when the lawyer and public notary swept to power in Estepona aged 48.
His landslide victory was perhaps not that surprising, after a succession of socialist mayors had one by one, fallen to allegations of corruption.
Urbano promised a new broom, in particular with swingeing cutbacks in the town hall’s enormous wage bill, while massively prettifying the town, introducing flower pots in every street and launching new museums and art galleries.
Under his stewardship, it is undeniable the town has been transformed from a dingy, car-clogged backwater to a Costa del Sol resort that now competes with Marbella for the well-heeled investor.
Those who know him personally speak of a ‘likeable’ gladhander who comes from humble roots in Coin, in the Guadalhorce Valley, where both his father and grandfather before him were labourers.
Even his enemies refer to him as having ‘enormous charm’, ‘guile’ and ‘ambition’. “It’s a very dangerous combination,” as one told the Olive Press.
Another, who works at the town hall, told us how he rules with an ‘iron fist’ and many staff are scared of him. “He can be a tyrant,” one said.
But one thing is for sure; no-one can doubt his intelligence: Achieving the rare feat of holding qualifications as a lawyer, notary and property registrar, Urbano was hailed as the ‘prototype of Spain’s meritocracy’.
But his associations with a rogue’s gallery of the Costa del Sol’s most corrupt lawyers and officials soon proved he had pulled himself up by his own bootstraps only so far.
The truth is much of his rise is owed to the many deals he has made with the most powerful, if dubious, figures on the coast.
A fluent German-speaker (he speaks no English) whose children attended the private German School in Marbella, Urbano is deeply integrated in the town’s German community.
It led to him befriending German lawyer Juan Hoffman, the son of a high-ranking Gestapo officer who served as Adolf Hitler’s personal Spanish translator during the war.
The father was later made an honorary consul in Malaga during the Franco regime, while Hoffman went on to become a key frontmen for Juan Antonio Roca, the chief architect of Marbella’s worst ever corruption scandal, which spawned the infamous ‘Malaya case’.
Hoffman was later sentenced to five years for money laundering and tax evasion in 2013, but he craftily dodged prison when he ‘voluntarily handed himself over’ in Ibiza.
When checked, officials found he was not behind bars, but had in fact fled the country.
He has never been found, but curiously was – and possibly still remains – an equal partner with Urbano in their shared property development firm, Nuevas Aires 2002 SL.
The company was identified as being one of the main vehicles behind a string of illegal developments, kickbacks and embezzlement that flourished during the Gil era.
Another partner was building firm Bonifacio Solis, whose ‘finance director’ since 2023 has reportedly been none other than the mayor’s 28-year-old son, Pablo Garcia.
Remarkably, he assumed the role, claimed El Diario, after serving just two months as a councillor at the town hall, something reportedly arranged by his dad.
B Solis conveniently became the lucky winner of the ‘tender’ to build Estepona’s €16.3 million Mirador del Carmen art gallery and restaurant, initially budgeted at €1.8 million.
The same firm also benefited from acquiring a nearby 2,000 sqm plot of land from the town hall for just €1.2 million – allegedly half its market value.
B Solis is now one of the largest construction companies in Spain, boasting a portfolio of luxury homes in exclusive projects in Zagaleta and the Sierra Blanca, as well as hotels and urbanisations in Marbella.
Surprise surprise it also landed the contracts for the athletics stadium in Estepona (€9.5 million, up from an initial budget of €6.1 million) and Estepona’s Orchidarium – ‘the largest in Europe’ for a further €2.3 million.
Other municipal work for B Solis includes the coastal walkway and restoration work on the Laguna Village complex.
Amid all these backroom deals which have made him a very rich man, Urbano has never published his income records nor his portfolio of property to Andalucia’s official transparency portal. A clear violation of Spanish law.
It was while sitting on his throne near the peak of the Costa del Sol’s political hierarchy that at, some point, Urbano allegedly started eyeing up a new employee with ‘libidinous intent’.
The Cordoba-born police officer, married with a wife and two teenage kids, has been on ‘mental health sick leave for almost 17 months due to these perversions he has suffered’, his lawyer told the Olive Press this week.
Under oath at court last week he told the judge his ordeal began almost immediately when he joined Estepona town hall in March 2022.
An invitation to the Parador de Malaga Golf hotel soon followed, which ‘with a deep fear for his job’, he felt unable to turn down.
With the pattern of their ‘abusive’ relationship then set, he claimed Urbano grew bolder in his demands.
His wife was coerced into accompanying him on a trip to Germany ‘for a series of sex orgies’ over several days, along with other ‘like-minded’ friends of the mayor, the policeman claimed.
But one particularly infamous trip to Monda castle, which Urbano part owns, began to draw back the curtain on just how far Urbano’s tentacles extend into the local business community.
Famed for its Moorish roots, it tellingly became a notorious swinger’s club, replete with sex dungeons and ‘glory holes’ after being purchased by Urbano alongside other investors.
While the mayor claimed to be ‘surprised’ back in 2013 by its activities, he has kept it within his property portfolio and it today functions as a luxury hotel and restaurant.
Curiously, his second in command at Estepona town hall, Ana Maria Velasco Garrido, is listed as the castle’s sole administrator.
The link to Garrido is entirely in keeping with Urbano’s style of rule, which maintains a close-knit team of loyalists to help manage his overlapping business and political endeavours.
They are all techniques he learned during Marbella’s ‘gilded age of corruption’ under the guiding hand of scandalous mayor Jesus Gil y Gil, who in the 1990s turned Marbella into a money pit of sleaze and corruption rarely seen before in Europe.
Under his GIL party, the owner of Atletico Madrid football club is blamed for allowing 30,000 illegal homes to be built in Marbella and setting up 70 companies to launder money, taking hundreds of millions in bribes and backhanders.
He avoided justice, dying young in 2004, but a total of 85 politicians went on to face trial, with many eventually serving prison sentences, including a number of former mayors.
It is worth pointing out then that the GIL party also ruled Estepona in the 1990s, when Urbano was starting out in his career as a notary.
Yet, while there are countless reports into his links to sleaze over the years, so far the mayor’s enemies have failed to make anything properly stick, hence the nickname ‘teflon mayor’.
“He’s managed to get away with so much and whatever they throw at him never seems to stick,” one British resident and former politician, Mary Page, told the Olive Press. “It’s why so many people call him the ‘senor teflon’.”
It remains to be seen if it is his sexual antics that finally end up clipping the wings of Estepona’s high-flying mayor.
