The Independent Liberal Group (Spanish: Grupo Independiente Liberal, GIL) was a far-right-wing Spanish political party. It was founded in 1991. Its founder was the convicted businessman Jesús Gil y Gil, who was mayor of Marbella in the Costa del Sol. The name in Spanish GIL is a play on words, as it references the surname of the party's founder Jesus Gil. GIL ruled Marbella since 1991 on a platform of fighting petty crime and public works of ornament. At the same time, Marbella was known as a refuge for British, Italian and Russian crime lords. After Gil was removed by Spanish tribunal on charges of political corruption, Julián Muñoz (also known for his romance with singer Isabel Pantoja) ruled the city. He was later ousted by GIL members supporting Marisol Yagüe Reyes with the help of a turncoat PSOE councillor who had been a vocal critic of corruption. In March 2006, Yagüe and most of her team were brought to trial on charges of corruption about urban development and planning permssion. In April 2006, the Spanish government started the procedure to forcibly dissolve council of Marbella, an unprecedented movement in the recent Spanish democracy.
GIL also established a strong presence in Estepona, Ceuta and Melilla.
Famous quotes containing the words independent, liberal and/or group:
“It is so rare to meet with a man outdoors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the labor of his hands. Behind every man’s busy-ness there should be a level of undisturbed serenity and industry, as within the reef encircling a coral isle there is always an expanse of still water, where the depositions are going on which will finally raise it above the surface.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Sculpture and painting are very justly called liberal arts; a lively and strong imagination, together with a just observation, being absolutely necessary to excel in either; which, in my opinion, is by no means the case of music, though called a liberal art, and now in Italy placed even above the other two—a proof of the decline of that country.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)