The fight between PP and PSOE over the latest information regarding Operation Catalonia is escalating. Both formations coincide this weekend in two simultaneous events organized by the parties in Ourense and A Coruña, respectively, less than a month before they face each other in the Galician polls on February 18. In the run-up to the elections, accusations are exchanged over the processing of the amnesty law and the latest judicial actions. Like those launched this Saturday in Galicia. Before attending the 26th interparliamentary meeting of the Popular Party, Miguel Tellado has called the news regarding the spying by the Interior leadership of Mariano Rajoy’s Government on members of Catalan independence parties a “smokescreen”. After days of silence in the PP on this matter, its spokesperson in Congress responded in this way in an interview on RNE, in which he accused the PSOE of “cynicism” and of using Operation Catalonia to “cover up” the “lies.” ” of the Executive. “If the socialists now want to oppose Mariano Rajoy, what we have to say is that we are here to oppose the socialist government, Pedro Sánchez and all the nonsense that the independentists intend to carry out,” he added. .
Tellado’s words received a response from María Jesús Montero shortly following. During her speech on the second day of the PSOE Political Convention in A Coruña, the first vice president and deputy general secretary of the socialists accused the PP of “attacking the rule of law” by “spying” on its political adversaries. “Tellado, who must be here for a convention, says that the PSOE is using the issue of Watergate, the improper, fraudulent, shameful use of State media as a smokescreen. As if the seriousness of the anti-democratic events that threaten the rule of law, as we have not seen for a long time, were an invention of the PSOE,” said the Minister of Finance. “The first thing in democracy is to respect public institutions, the powers of the State, respect that each person has their task and never ever use it to enrich themselves fraudulently, so that corruption makes its way and never use it to allegedly spy on those they “They consider them enemies of Spain, which are all those who do not think like the PP,” he added.
Popular leadership sources downplay the importance of the published information. For Génova, the “true Operation Catalonia” is the one that Sánchez carries out in the negotiations with the pro-independence forces. The deputy secretary of Territorial Organization of the PP, Carmen Fúnez, confirmed this Saturday that Rajoy will be present in the Galician campaign, despite the latest news regarding the dirty war of the Interior during his mandate. “He is a Galician who I believe would never resist participating in this electoral campaign. For us, having Mariano Rajoy is a source of pride and an honor,” she expressed in Fúnez in Ourense.
The PSOE, for its part, wants to close as soon as possible the crisis with the judges that Teresa Ribera opened following her criticism of the judge of the National Court Manuel García-Castellón, whom on Friday she reproached for his “desire” to act “in sensitive political moments “, in reference to the magistrate’s orders in the Democratic Tsunami case, in which he accuses the leader of Junts, Carles Puigdemont, and the general secretary of ERC, Marta Rovira, of terrorism, both fugitives from justice. Upon her arrival at the event, Vice President Teresa Ribera did not want to make any statements. “I have nothing to say,” she said.
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The one who has spoken out has been the minister spokesperson for the Government, Pilar Alegría: “The Government’s position is one of maximum respect for the rest of the powers of the State. The vice president tried to convey the same position that we in the Government have been implementing since day one. We may like it more or we may like it less, like any citizen, some type of judicial resolution, but respect [del Gobierno] “It prevails above all,” said Alegría. “There is a rule of law and a separation of powers established, and what we always do is respect each other,” the Minister of Education and Sports also insisted.
“Of course, from the PSOE and from the Government we are very clear, the one that has continually failed in this matter has been the PP. And I’m not saying it, the newspaper archives are there,” continued Alegría, who recalled the messages from Ignacio Cosidó when he was spokesperson for the Senate “saying that they were going to control the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court”, in the pact between socialists and popular to renew the General Council of the Judiciary —and which was finally truncated and remains pending renewal since 2018—. “I want to remember the words that the PP has said on numerous occasions regarding the legitimacy of the Constitutional Court or the latest worrying information [sobre la Operación Cataluña durante la etapa de Jorge Fernández como ministro de Interior en el Ejecutivo de Mariano Rajoy] that we are learning regarding how, when the Popular Party was in Government, it used all the Government’s public resources to spy on and extort political opponents. Therefore, the Government’s position from the first moment is one of maximum respect for the rest of the powers of the State,” he concluded.
For her part, former vice president Carmen Calvo has been harsher: “It is evident that at some point more or less correct statements can be made, but the PSOE has no blemish of knowing its place when it is in the institutions and the respect he has for the powers of the three powers of the State. “There are only a few statements that are not part of what we feel, respecting, as Ministers Bolaños, Marlaska, and Planas have said, the resolutions adopted by the Judiciary, whether we like them or not.”
From Ourense, the PP has demanded Ribera’s dismissal. The general secretary of the popular party, Cuca Gamarra, has called his statements an “intolerable attack” on judicial independence and the rule of law. She “she will be rewarded for accusing a judge of prevarication. The Socialist Party is increasingly closer to the independentists and further away from the Spanish,” Gamarra criticized in this regard.
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