Jesus Gil

Gregorio Jesús Gil y Gil (El Burgo de Osma, Soria, March 12, 1933-Madrid, May 14, 2004), better known as Jesús Gil, He was a Spanish businessman, politician and sports leader. He was president and largest shareholder of Club Atlético de Madrid between 1987 and 2003 and mayor of Marbella between 1991 and 2002.

Biography

The eldest of the four children of a married couple from a humble social background, Jesús Gil completed his primary studies at the College of the Claretian Fathers in Aranda de Duero (Burgos). He began his working life in an auto parts store after dropping out of Economic Sciences.In 1961 he married María Ángeles Marín Cobo and they had four children: Jesús, Miguel Ángel, Myriam and Óscar.

He was tried and imprisoned for the crime of involuntary manslaughter for the death of 58 people when in June 1969 a dining room in the Los Ángeles de San Rafael urbanization, of which he was the promoter and owner, collapsed. The government directly blamed Gil for the disaster by not having requested the regulatory permits for the previous works; the investigation also concluded that the work had been carried out without the supervision of an architect and without a construction plan. Since the inauguration of the complex was scheduled for July, it is speculated that the rush to finish it could be behind the tragedy, even witnesses later declared that that day "the cement was not yet dry". In addition to the 58 deaths, another 147 people were injured. He was sentenced to five years in prison after promising to pay one million pesetas to each family of each of the 58 deceased, but he was pardoned by Francisco Franco after having served 18 months in prison and having paid 400 million pesetas.

Marbella

On May 26, 1991, Jesús Gil and his party, the GIL, obtained an absolute majority in the mayoralty of Marbella. That same summer he even went so far as to present a television program, Las noches de tal y tal, broadcast from that city for the Telecinco network. For eleven years he was mayor, obtaining three absolute majorities in said municipality. He also held the presidency of the Commonwealth of Municipalities of the Western Costa del Sol between 1995 and 1999.

Jesús Gil lived the last years of his life with numerous open legal cases. In some cases he was declared innocent and in others, he was convicted, events that led him to jail up to three times. In 1999 he entered prison, being accused of crimes of embezzlement of public funds and falsification of a public document. In October 2000 he was sentenced to 28 years of disqualification and six months of arrest for four crimes of prevarication —for what would be forced to leave the Mayor's Office of Marbella—related to the Camisetas case, and for the diversion of 450 million pesetas from the Marbella town hall to Club Atlético de Madrid. Jesús Gil was in preventive detention the week of April 16, 2002, for the embezzlement of 4442 million pesetas from the Marbella City Council between 1991 and 1995, money that Jesús Gil transferred directly to his own bank accounts, those of his companies or front men. He left the mayor's office on April 24, 2002 after confirming the sentence of the Supreme Court, in addition to having been preventively jailed six of his collaborators on the 18th of the same month. At his farewell from the mayor's office he was cheered by his followers.

On December 13, 2002, he was acquitted by the Provincial Court of Málaga, together with Julián Muñoz, for the Jinete case, "achieving the seventh victory against the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor" in his words. This would not be the last time that those closest to him at the head of the Marbella executive were implicated in corruption cases; the most notable of them, one of the largest corruption scandals in the history of Spain, and which put an end to the stage begun by Gil was the Malaya case, with Jesús Gil already deceased, where Julián Muñoz former deputy mayor of Gil and Later mayor of Marbella after his disqualification, he was sentenced to several years in prison, as was Gil's urban planning manager at the time, Juan Antonio Roca, seizing assets worth billions of euros in the police operation.

President of Atlético de Madrid

On June 26, 1987, elections were held for the presidency of Club Atlético de Madrid, a position provisionally held by Francisco Javier Castedo after the death, in March, of Vicente Calderón. Four candidates attended the same: the businessman Salvador Santos Campano, the former ministers Agustín Cotorruelo and Enrique Sánchez de León and the businessman Jesús Gil y Gil, who was elected. At the time of his victory, he had been a member of the club for six years. On the sporting front, during his management at Atlético, the club won one League (1995/96) and three Copas del Rey (1991, 1992 and 1996), achieving in this last year the «double». But also under his mandate the club was relegated (1999/2000), playing like this for the first time since 1934 in the Second Division. In the 2001/2002 season he would achieve promotion again, with Luis Aragonés as coach. However, his presidency was littered with controversy from the outset.

In September 1990, after a UEFA Cup match between Atlético de Madrid and Fiorentina, when complaining about the refereeing, Gil called the match referee, Michel Vautrot, a faggot and pedophile, referring to him in the following terms and for which the UEFA secretary officially complained to the Spanish Federation and demanded explanations from Gil.

He's a faggot. I know of very good ink that after we were eliminated from the UEFA Cup to that schoolgirl, the Italians sought a blond boy of blue eyes.

At the beginning of the 1990s, as a consequence of the so-called Sports Law approved by the State, football clubs had to convert from sports companies to sports public limited companies, therefore the decision-making capacity over the entities was transferred from the vote of the partners to the shareholders that these new public limited companies should have. The law had the declared objective of achieving the financial stability of the clubs, which at that time were going through a general financial crisis. Only Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, Athletic Club and Osasuna were allowed to remain incorporated as sports companies, in theory because they were the only clubs that enjoyed good financial health at the time. In order to be incorporated into a public limited company, comply with the law and thus avoid not automatically descending to Second B, the club required a share capital of 2,060 million pesetas. On the last day of the term, in 1992, the club saved the situation thanks to several loans granted by Banco de Vitoria and Credit Lyonnais, of 1,300 and 650 million pesetas respectively; All of this had the backing of the Banesto bank, chaired at the time by Mario Conde, after Caja Madrid refused to endorse the club. During the change of the club's name, thanks to a series of tricks by Jesús Gil, in collaboration with the Then vice president Enrique Cerezo and Gil's son, Miguel Ángel Gil Marín, the Atlético president managed to take over 95% of the club's shares without having paid any money. Although at that time not much attention was paid, years later the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor would denounce the case, which would become the so-called "Atlético case". Despite the fact that the National Court considered proven the crimes of the leaders and the misappropriation of the club's shares, which led the club to be intervened by the courts until 2004, the Supreme Court of Spain definitively ruled that the previous sentences were without effect of having prescribed the crimes at the time the process began years ago. During this process of reorganizing the club, in order to cut all kinds of expenses, Gil made the decision to close numerous sections, including all the lower categories of the club ("the quarry"), with the exception of Madrid, which was a member of the Second Division. B. As a consequence of this, many young promises had to look for a new team, the most prominent of all of them was Raúl González Blanco, who with his forced departure from Atlético ended up at Real Madrid, where he became one of their most famous captains.

In March 1996, during a heated argument outside the headquarters of the Professional Soccer League, Gil punched the then manager of SD Compostela, José González Fidalgo, hard in the face, for which he received the condemnation and general rejection by Spanish football. In the quarterfinals of the 1997 Champions League, Atlético faced Ajax in Amsterdam. After the match, Gil declared in a racist tone that "Ajax looked like the Congo and that blacks came out from everywhere as if it were a churro machine".

On December 22, 1999, the judge of the National Court, Manuel García Castellón, ordered the dismissal of Gil as head of Atlético de Madrid and the judicial intervention of the club, naming Luis Manuel Rubí as administrator. The club went through an extremely delicate moment. Finally, on April 11, 2000, the judge agreed to "replace" the rojiblancos leaders in their posts, and the following day, Jesús Gil assumed the presidency again. On May 27, 2003, he resigned as president of Atlético de Madrid, replacing him in office Enrique Cerezo.

Death

On May 9, 2004, he suffered a cerebral thrombosis while he was at his farm in Valdeolivas. He died in Madrid on May 14 as a result of cardiac arrest caused by cerebral thrombosis. His wake took place at the Vicente Calderón Stadium, attended by more than 15,000 people. He is buried in the family pantheon in the Almudena cemetery.

Shortly after his death, in June 2004, the Supreme Court declared him acquitted by prescription of the crime in the Atlético case, accused by the National Court of misappropriation of Club Atlético de Madrid. The same sentence found him guilty of defrauding the club for simulating contracts, although his sentence was extinguished due to death.

In 2019, 15 years after his death, the documentary The Pioneer, based on his life, premiered on HBO.

Ideology and temperament

Gil became a figure with a strong presence in the media at the end of the 1980s, favored for his strident style and resort to insults in his statements. His speech was characterized by his rejection of politics, without actually articulating a developed ideological corpus, framing "gilismo" according to Xavier Casals Meseguer in a protest populism, with anti-elitist roots, with common features with those of the political experiences of Mario Conde and José María Ruiz Mateos. elements of "municipal neoliberalism", which he would have applied in his municipal management in Marbella. At the same time, in his political opinions, framed in the extreme right and highlighted by the populist tone of his speeches, sexist, racist, homophobes and a recurring nostalgic exaltation of the figure of Franco and his dictatorship.

He publicly referred to the then councilor of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), Isabel García Marcos, as a "whore" during a municipal plenary session and on one occasion referred to the journalist Carmen Rigalt as the "jinetera del journalismo" ». The coast of Malaga, especially the municipalities under its political and economic influence, became in those years a discreet residence for British, Italian and Russian mobsters, in addition to continuing as a refuge for fascist exiles, such as Otto Remer or León Degrelle, who they were trying to avoid extradition to their countries of origin. On the other hand, Gil instigated the persecution on the streets of drug users and prostitutes, including beatings and deportation of low-income foreigners, as well as donations of money to homeless people so that they they left the city.