Álvaro Gijón, a Partido Popular deputy in the Balearic parliament and the former deputy mayor of Palma, has denied "absolutely" accusations that he attended drugs and sex parties at a finca property of Tolo Cursach or at brothels.
He said yesterday that he doesn't know Tolo Cursach and has never spoken to him. He reiterated that he has no intention of resigning from his public positions - he is also a councillor at Palma town hall - and added that he feels a profound sense of being unable to defend himself. Nevertheless, he has a "clear conscience, because nothing that has been said is true". He said firmly that he has never been with prostitutes and has never taken drugs, adding that he willing to be given toxicology tests to prove this.
Gijón was responding to evidence given by a female witness to Judge Manuel Penalva. She said that there used to be Monday poker games at Cursach's Puntiró finca and that these would end in "genuine Bacchanalia". At these parties, girls (who were well paid) were given drugs and had to engage in violent sexual practices and have sex with several men at once.
These parties, according to the witness, were attended by Gijón and the former president of the PP in Palma, José María Rodríguez. He, Rodríguez, is alleged to have spent whole afternoons at a brothel in Palma, where he would drink "expensive bottles" and constantly select girls with whom he could have sex. The witness added that some girls refused to have sex with him because of "some strange and risky tastes". She said that she saw Rodríguez leave this establishment "on numerous occasions, totally out of it on cocaine and alcohol". Gijón was a less frequent visitor than Rodríguez, but she saw him "in an official car" and in a "deplorable" state. Neither Gijón nor Rodríguez would pay the girls, as they "were on the house".
Meanwhile, the prosecution service has opposed an appeal on behalf of Tolo Cursach for his release from custody and for a raising of the secrecy with which court hearings are being held.
The Provincial Court in Palma was presented with this appeal yesterday. The request that the secrecy of the hearings is lifted is because of what Cursach's lawyers claim is their client's lack of defence. If this is not lifted, they at least want him to be released, having been held for three months and charged with numerous offences.