The magistrate-judge Natalia Suárez Acosta, head of the Criminal Section of the Court of First Instance of Las Palmas, has issued an acquittal ruling in favor of Vicente Boluda, sole administrator of the commercial entity Remolcadores y Barcazas de Las Palmas. The ruling nullifies the accusation for an alleged crime of false accusation filed by the head of the legal advisory of Port Authority of the State, who sought two years in prison and compensation of 25,000 euros for moral damages. The ruling, accessed by Canarymaritime, is not final.
The procedure (288/2025) originates from the legal battle over the towing service in the Port of Las Palmas. Boluda’s subsidiary had previously filed a lawsuit against the leadership of the Port Authority of the State, alleging a purported ‘plotted abuse of power’ to favor the competitor Odiel Towage (Fairplay) by granting licenses without the updated technical specifications. Although that lawsuit was dismissed in 2021 for lack of evidence, the judiciary now determines that the entrepreneur did not act with ‘reckless disregard for the truth’, but rather in exercise of his right to judicial protection.
The crux of the controversy lies in the granting of licenses for the towing service under an outdated regulatory framework (a specification from 1994). According to the established facts, Rómulo issued a favorable report in 2019 to grant a conditional license to Odiel Towage, a legal thesis supported by the General Counsel of the State but later declared null by the High Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) in October 2025, considering it ‘contrary to the law’.
This nullity issued by the Administrative Court has proven key to the acquittal in Criminal Court. The ruling emphasizes that: Boluda’s lawsuit was not a malicious invention, that there were well-founded doubts about the legality of the administrative procedure, and that the TSJC itself ended up ruling in favor of the accused’s company by nullifying the license of the competitor.
Magistrate Suárez Acosta bases the acquittal on the premise that criminal law cannot punish someone who turns to the courts in the face of a reasonable legal discrepancy. ‘The accused cannot be required to prove the truth of his accusation’, states the ruling, reminding that the burden of proof lies with the prosecution. Testimony from the complainant during the hearing revealed internal tensions within the port entity, even declaring that he received ‘pressures’ to raise inquiries to the State Counsel following drafts that supposedly came from external lawyers. These elements, far from proving the falsity of the complaint from Boluda’s subsidiary, reinforce the thesis that there existed a real and complex administrative conflict.
Despite the fact that the private prosecution characterized the events as a crime of false accusation under article 456.1.1º of the Penal Code, the ruling is categorical: The fact that a lawsuit ends in dismissal does not automatically imply that it is false. The justice system distinguishes between a slanderous accusation and a critical interpretation of administrative acts that ultimately turned out to be illegal. With this ruling, another chapter of the ‘towing war’ in Las Palmas closes, making it clear that criminal prosecution cannot be used as a mechanism of retaliation against administrators who challenge the management of public agencies, as long as there are signs of irregularity at the base of the conflict.
