The PP keeps the ultra-right Le Senne in the presidency of the Balearic Parliament

The PP decided to abstain on Tuesday morning and finally abstained during the vote to remove Vox MP Gabriel Le Senne as president of the Balearic Parliament. This will allow the far-right MP to continue to lead the autonomous chamber despite being investigated as the author of an alleged hate crime after tearing up the photograph of several women shot by Franco during a plenary session last June. The left-wing bloc, formed by the PSIB-PSOE, Més per Mallorca, Més per Menorca and Podemos groups, presented a motion to remove Le Senne from the presidency of the Balearic chamber during an extraordinary plenary session, which was held on Tuesday. In the end, the abstention of the 27 PP deputies, who did not want to advance their vote until the plenary session itself, has made the proposal, which needed the support of three-fifths of the chamber to go ahead, decline.

The abstention of the PP has allowed Le Senne to save his post, despite the fact that an investigating judge is investigating him for an alleged hate crime following a complaint filed by several relatives of the women murdered by the Francoist side who appeared in the photograph taken by Le Senne, such as the communist militant Aurora Picornell. The Memoria de Mallorca entity joined this complaint, while the Estimada Aurora collective, in memory of Picornell, also filed a complaint against the president of the Chamber, who will have to appear on September 27. The episode involving Le Senne took place during the course of a plenary session in which, precisely, the consideration of the repeal of the Law of Democratic Memory was being debated.

During the extraordinary plenary session on Tuesday, the parliamentary spokesman for the PP, Sebastià Sagreras, defended his party’s abstention, which he did not reveal until the last moment, pointing out that it is Vox that has to explain to its 62,000 voters the reason why it has decided to break the agreement to apply “policies of change” with the PP but has decided to keep the chair of the presidency of Parliament. “Vox has broken the investiture and governability agreements that made Le Senne the president of the Chamber. We continue to say that if they were consistent with the unilateral breaking of the agreement, Le Senne would have had to resign,” said Sagreras, who insisted that the PP has no commitment to support the ultra in the presidency. However, he defended his party’s abstention on the grounds that they cannot support an initiative that comes from a formation, the PSIB-PSOE, whose deputies “have not asked for forgiveness for the case of the masks nor have they resigned for it.” “This proposal from the PSOE falls by itself. The credibility and the background of the PSOE are more false than a penny in Seville. They have already made similar offers without any credibility,” Sagreras stressed.

Meanwhile, Le Senne has dedicated his speech to defending his attitude during the plenary session of discord and has accused the opposition of orchestrating a campaign of harassment based on “lies, defamation and slander” during the last few weeks. “They know that I am not a fascist, I am not, they know it very well,” he said, addressing the deputies of the left, whom he accused of launching “partisan tirades” by displaying the photographs of the executed women. “If Garrido (the PSOE deputy) had closed the computer or accepted my decision, the folio would be intact,” he justified during his speech.

The socialist spokesman, Iago Negueruela, has accused Le Senne of taking justice into his own hands when he saw that the deputies did not pay attention to what he asked. “I am not going to talk about this with you anymore. You will have to answer for it in court, something that has not happened here in forty years of democracy, that we have a president accused of a hate crime,” Negueruela stressed, who has reproached the PP for having “turned a blind eye” and having allowed such a situation in the chamber. The spokespersons of Més per Mallorca and Més per Menorca, as well as Podemos, have described Le Senne as an “unworthy president” and have described his continued position at the head of the chamber as a “real mockery” for the citizens of the Balearic Islands.