The PSOE will bring Tellado and other PP officials to the congressional mask investigation commission | Spain

The Congress Board approved this Tuesday, thanks to the five votes in favor of the progressive majority formed by the PSOE and Sumar that controls that governing body of the Cortes, the creation of an investigation commission into the thousands of emergency contracts that signed by “all administrations” during the dramatic stage of the pandemic that Spain suffered in the first half of 2020. The PP tried to cover up its rejection of that commission in Congress by maintaining, in a “strange and unprecedented” way, according to a member of that Table, which refrained from participating in that vote despite its four members being present. Now it will be the plenary session of Congress that will ratify this commission and the parties will decide within it their calendar and those who will appear. The PSOE announced that it will summon the current parliamentary spokesperson of the PP, Miguel Tellado, and to other state, regional and local officials of that party and others “to correct any errors that are found” and that may have occurred. Tellado himself appeared again this Tuesday to demand the resignation of the president of the Cortes, Francina Armengol, based again on suspicions and journalistic information that points to her for possible irregularities in the hiring of masks in those months of 2020.

The deputy of En Comú Podem and Sumar, Gerardo Pisarello, first secretary of the Table, was the first to speak out about the unusual behavior of the members of the PP in that Congress body by commenting that, on the one hand, they had participated in the session this Tuesday, but at the same time they had tried to make it known that they had not wanted to vote. And in the end they didn’t. Tellado, for his part, did not know how to explain during his appearance what had happened or what the representatives of his party had done at the Congress Board, but he took advantage of the opportunity to attack Armengol again for the same reasons, arguments and harshness as in the last few days, by placing it as “the gateway to the plot” of the Koldo case in the Balearic Islands. The PP also demanded that Armengol refrain from voting and participating in that Board debate, which he did not do.

The spokesperson for the PSOE in the Lower House, Patxi López, began his presentation by underlining that “this strategy of anything goes and getting dirty” of the PP produced a mixture of “sadness, frustration and anger”, while pointing out that said strategy did not It matched very well with the opposition shown to the investigation in Congress of everything that happened in the administrations during the pandemic. The PP maintains that neither Congress nor Armengol are a territory or a “neutral arbiter” but rather a party (“it’s like putting the fox to take care of the chickens,” Tellado portrayed) and the party prefers to direct its requests and demands to appearances in the Senate, where they have an absolute majority.

Ratification in a plenary session

The Congressional investigation commission, in any case, will be formed as soon as a next plenary session ratifies it. Then the majority parties will agree on their list of requests for appearances, but the PSOE already advanced its intentions this Tuesday. The socialists do not just want a commission that investigates what happened in the Balearic Islands or only in central government departments. Patxi López himself announced in his intervention before the press that one of his first targets will be Tellado, because he appears in the summary of the Koldo case when alluding to the efforts that the former advisor to the Minister of Development said he had tried with the environment of administrations controlled by the PP, such as the Balearic Islands now. Later, López joked about his intention to find out in that context who “that Alberto” could be, who is also cited in some conversations in that summary and with what would seem to be an attempt to target the popular leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Several relevant sources of the PP specify, however, that with that name they intend to point out it is Alberto Durán, a lawyer for the PP and a person precisely in this case.

Socialist sources later commented that when the time comes to issue summonses, which will also be obligatory, those of those responsible for the central government, the Ministry of Public Works during the period of José Luis Ábalos, and the previous Balearic regional executive of the socialist Francina Armengol will be studied. , and the current one, from the popular Marga Prohens, and from other administrations. In his presentation, López spoke about problems with the hiring of masks and with product complaints fake both in the Andalusia of Juan Manuel Moreno, the Galicia of Feijóo, the City Council of the capital of Spain, of José Luis Martínez-Almeida, or the Community of Madrid, of Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The socialists understand that if the fan of accusations and suspicions about the Balearic Islands and Armengol is started, they will extend it to other areas of the PP’s orbit.

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The discussion about the future of that commission served as an excuse for PSOE and PP to become entangled with a broad line of attacks and defense of the role of the president of Congress, Francina Armengol, in the plot. Tellado came out to list a series of covers, mostly from right-wing media and digital media, in which the name of the former socialist Balearic president appeared in headlines where she was linked to irregularities and shadows of corruption. He once again demanded her resignation and strung together an elaborate theory according to which both Koldo and Ábalos and Armengol were actually trying to cover up both the repercussions of the amnesty law and the “Pedro Sánchez case”, whom he addressed as “the big boss”, and about whom he presumed that he would have even included the last two in his electoral lists on July 23 so that they would be qualified and could better protect themselves.

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