It is now a year since ERC and Junts voted in favour of the socialist Francina Armengol as president of Congress after one of the many negotiations at the last minute. Among the conditions imposed by the Catalan parties, the PSOE agreed not to put obstacles in the way of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into Operation Catalonia, to oversee the Pegasus case of spying on separatists from the lower house and allowing another commission on the attacks of August 17, 2017 in Barcelona and Cambrils. The three commissions of inquiry were established in December 2023 – during the first plenary session of the investiture. But, despite the initial demands of the nationalists and the noise generated by the attacks against judges from the Congress rostrum, the work of the three commissions has been practically null during the following months. Sources from ERC confirm that they will push since September “actively to start the work as soon as possible.”
The commissions of inquiry demanded by ERC and Junts last year are focused above all on investigating corruption and illegal operations promoted by the police sewers and the top brass of the Ministry of the Interior of the PP government of Mariano Rajoy. The first of these commissions approved in the plenary session held on December 12 was called Operation Catalonia, the second aims to work on unexplained aspects of the jihadist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils in August 2017, and the third seeks to confirm whether the so-called Pegasus system was used to spy on politicians, journalists and lawyers for political reasons.
After having been constituted but practically paralyzed, and before the parliamentary calendar that starts in September, sources from ERC assure: “After this intense period of sessions, where we have managed with our seven deputies to push through one of the most important points of the agreement reached for the investiture; the amnesty law, which is already a reality, from Esquerra Republicana we understand that now it is time to start these commissions of inquiry. We are going to try to do it as soon as possible, that would be desirable.” To which socialist sources respond: “Everything that is in the agreements will be fulfilled. Also the commissions of inquiry.”
The inactivity shown before the three commissions requested by the Catalan parties contrasts with the agility shown by PSOE and PP to promote the commissions of inquiry into the purchase of medical supplies during the pandemic, subsequently activated in the lower house and in the Senate respectively, since last March. Socialists and Populars have used this instrument provided for by the Constitution in its article 76, looking askance at each other and placing numerous leaders of the opposing party in the Cortes’ dock, while the first three were left in ostracism. A war of parliamentary commissions on the purchase of medical supplies during the pandemic fought in the midst of a highly tense climate and as part of the political confrontation of a session period marked by successive electoral campaigns, with more media-driven than investigative results.
Sanchez’s appearance
After the holiday break, activity will resume in September with the question of whether the PP will schedule Pedro Sánchez’s appearance for next month, with the added bonus of having exercised its right not to testify in the case opened against his wife, Begoña Gómez, at the end of July. After weeks of hesitation, the PP refused to question the president in the Senate before the European elections on June 9 despite completely controlling the parliamentary timetable thanks to its absolute majority in the upper house. Some Popular Party senators then privately expressed their doubts about whether the president would emerge unscathed, and even benefit, from a hypothetical questioning in the middle of the campaign. However, the PP did extend the list of those who would appear in the run-up to the European elections to include Sánchez; the First Vice President and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, and the former Minister of Economy and current President of the European Investment Bank (EIB), Nadia Calviño, seeking to make a splash at the polls.
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The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, recently promised, on July 18, to summon Sánchez to the Senate. “Yes, we are going to do it,” Feijóo said in an interview on COPE. But, again, without specifying when. The PP has continued to raise the decibels against Sánchez because both his wife and the president have exercised the right not to testify before Judge Juan Carlos Peinado, against whom they have also filed a complaint for prevarication. The PP accuses Sánchez of “intimidating” the judges, obstructing the investigation and not giving explanations. “We are not going to stop, we have to know the truth,” said the Popular Party MEP Dolors Montserrat at the party headquarters last week, in a press conference in which she reaffirmed the Popular Party’s commitment to use “all legitimate instruments” – “political”, “legislative” and “judicial” – to clarify the alleged corruption that they attribute to the head of the Executive and his entourage. With these last ingredients on the table, and with their arguments in hand, Feijóo’s party would have to use new excuses to justify why it is not setting a date for the president’s appearance in September itself.
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