DANA Commissioner Accused of Fake Degree Retires in Spain

José María Ángel retires trinc investigation into degree fraud

There is a way to close a scandal that does not involve resigning, returning money, or facing trial. It consists of weathering the storm until retirement age arrives and the file closes itself. This is what surrounds José María Ángel Batalla, the Government Commissioner for the Valencia DANA, who is accused of falsifying his bachelor's degree to access positions requiring qualifications. The Anticorrupción (Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office) investigation into alleged document fraud against the Administration has not prevented him — according to circulating reports — from retiring with the maximum pension. The detail that disorients: he chaired the Ethics Committee of the Valencian PSOE.

The DANA commissioner who forged his degree chaired the Valencian PSOE Ethics Committee. The irony is not ours; it belongs to the role itself. While some speak of resignation, others are more precise: he does not resign, he retires. The difference matters, because retirement cannot be revoked, disqualification is ineffective, and prosecution becomes moot.

From administrative assistant to A1 level with two fake certificates

The career path, as reconstructed in messages, has substance. Ángel and his vvife, Carmen Ninet — daughter of historic Valencian socialist leader Santiago Ninet — allegedly passed civil service exams at the lowest level, as administrative assistants at the Provincial Council (Fruta). From there, through internal promotion, they jumped to A1 and A2 posts, which do require a university degree. This is where, according to the accusation, the two forged certificates appear.

The family is not an isolated case of promotion based on merit. His father-in-law, Santiago Ninet, was already a big fish in the Provincial Council and the Valencian PSOE in the late seventies, within the orbit of Joan Lerma and Antonio Asunción. From this came the nepotism, internal promotions, and successive political offices: mayoralties, senate seats, head of Emergencies for the Generalitat under Ximo Puig, and DANA Commissioner. A resume without a single day of hard work outside the party.

The salary for the special DANA Commissioner post for Valencia was around €120,000. The position was created precisely to coordinate the institutional response to a catastrophe that caught the Administration without protocols, resources, or anyone at the helm. The lingering question is uncomfortable: if the resume was false, what else was?

The vvife, the museum, and the brother-in-law supplier

The family network has another leg. Carmen Ninet serves as deputy director of Muvim, the Museu Valencià de la Il·lustració i la Modernitat (Valencia Museum of Enlightenment and Modernity), in a post also under suspicion. And according to published reports, from that position, services were recurrently contracted from Nebula Astrolúdico, a company owned by her brother Ricardo Ninet specializing in science workshops and astronomical observations. Public contracting, within the family.

This is no minor detail. In the Valencian cultural sector, it is pointed out, there is a long list of positions held by PSOE allies with questionable degrees, hand-picked posts, and accumulated airs of superiority over years. Many waited for the perfect wave to tell their story.

A pattern that is not exclusive to one party

Here it is worth avoiding self-deception. The pattern — family nepotism, internal promotion without qualifications, chained political offices, cross-contracts among relatives — is not exclusive to one acronym. In Valencia, the PSOE has governed less than half the autonomous time, but cases accumulate. In Andalusia, Madrid, provincial councils, and town halls across half the country, the mechanism is identical: local federations function in practice like quasi-mafious structures where control of the post, the contract, and the favor is fought over.

What changes is not the modus operandi, but the response. A rower receiving a subsidy who fails to declare an inheritance faces the complete state machine. A commissioner with a fake degree and a €120,000 salary retires with the maximum. The asymmetry is the true scandal, more than the specific case.

The calculation nobody makes: contributions from incivil origin

There is a technical derivative that almost nobody puts on the table. If the degree that allowed internal promotion was false, the social security contributions generated during all those years in A1 and A2 posts would, strictly speaking, be non-existent. There would be no valid registration in the civil servant regime, no contribution base, no right to a maximum pension. The complete calculation, year by year with interest, yields a surprising figure. Nobody has done it officially.

What is known is that, as of this discussion, the matter remains open. The Anticorrupción investigation into alleged document fraud against the Administration pogre, but the protagonist's biological clock runs faster than the judicial one. A negligible prison sentence, a disqualification that no longer serves any purpose, a repayment of salaries that nobody demands. The predictable outcome: he gets away with it.

Hospitalization and anxiety

The latest twist was José María Ángel's hospitalization after a week of media harassment. Some read it as a human gesture, while others read it for what it is: anxiety over what has emerged and, above all, what is yet to emerge. The cause remains open. So does the retirement.

Can a system that allows someone to retire with the maximum pension despite having allegedly falsified the degree required to reach that point be reformed?