The Popular Party maintains that during its last government there were no instructions to combat political adversaries from the Interior Ministry with illegal maneuvers. The position of the conservatives was exhibited this Wednesday at the Congress of Deputies by whom he was head of the Executive then, Mariano Rajoy, and then endorsed by those who served as Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz. There was no recording, document or incriminating sentence that moved either of the two of their position.
The PP spokesman in the Investigation Commission of Operation Catalunya, Rafael Hernando, clear the doubt about whether the current direction of the party has reviewed that period in different ways to its leaders of that time: it has not been so. Hernando considers Operation Catalunya “an invention” of the press, as well as the extrajudicial investigations to Podemos.
Hernando also denied the existence of irregular financing of his party for at least 20 years. He came to say that box B of the PP appears in a judgment of the National Court because Judge José Ricardo de Prada ordered to damage the party and that, later, the Supreme Court did not confirm such an extreme. However, the sentence of the Second Court Chamber confirmed that the central headquarters of the party was reformed with black money from its box B.
In this horizon of denialism a handle emerges for the thesis of the conservatives. Until now, there is no sentence that alludes to a “Catalunya operation”, a journalistic term to summarize police maneuvers against the sovereign process that were never prosecuted. In addition, attempts to open in the courts a specific cause for that police action have failed. Rajoy is charged in an Andorra Court, but Spanish justice has refused to pursue the Rogatory Commission that was required from the neighboring country.
The instructor of the Villarejo case, the judge already retired Manuel García Castellón, considered materially classified as secret documents on the commissioner’s works in Catalonia. He also put in writing that the policeman limited himself to “capturing information about corruption” in that autonomous community.
Faced with this, there is the recent ruling of the Supreme Court that condemns secrets of the police officer during the Rajoy government, retired commissioner Eugenio Pino. The High Court considers the maneuver accredited to enter stolen information in the cause of the Pujol. The “proven facts” section enshrines the ‘modus operandi’ of Operation Catalunya, but this denomination does not appear in the ruling.
Mariano Rajoy explained as the main idea of his speech that he does not know a “Catalunya operation”, but that he knows a lot about “the Catalan operation of truth”, having the sovereign process in Catalonia and its main milestones, such as the referendum of October 1, 2017 or the decisions of the Parliament to proclaim independence.
To the latter respect, Rajoy several times in a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights that supports the decisions of the Constitutional annuling the resolutions of the Parliament. This defense of the organ that interprets the fundamental norm by Rajoy in full offensive of the Popular Party to the same since it enjoys progressive majority and is chaired by Cándido Conde-Pumpido is produced.
Rajoy presented himself to the commission with an advantage over Fernández Díaz. The former president is indicated third in the recordings of Commissioner Villarejo and other police officers, but the minister appears speaking in the first person. We can introduced in the session the prospective investigations against its leaders between 2014 and 2016. A chief inspector, a prominent member of the one known as a political brigade, says in an audio that he has traveled to New York to collect information against Podemos from a former Venezuelan minister “with a mandate of Rajoy”.
Mariano Rajoy is widely cited by Villarejo and other members of the Political Brigade in the third leg of the dirty war, which pretended to sabotage the cause of box B of the PP at the National Court. The Internal Affairs Unit assumed that when the police spoke of the knowledge that Rajoy had of the parapolicial operation with reserved funds they referred to him as “the beards” or “the Asturian.” It was not enough for Judge García Castellón to decide to delve into those indications.
Fernández Díaz also was implied to the Government. In a recording in his office, disseminated by Public.es in June 2016, the Interior Minister appears talking in his office with the then director of the Antifrau office, Daniel de Alfonso, describing the maneuvers to jump scandals in the media of independence politicians. “The president of the Government knows it,” says the former Minister of the Interior in that audio.
Precisely Fernández Díaz took advantage of his appearance on Wednesday to deny the validity of that recording and others that incriminate him even more. Fernández Díaz said that he did not say what has been transcribed from that conversation, as when he affirms “the Prosecutor’s Office refines it.”
Perhaps the most Kafkian moment of his speech occurred when he also denied having dispatched with Commissioner Villarejo in his life. He said the same as in his previous appearance in Congress about these facts. Only between that statement and this is information from El País with an audio in which the Minister is heard with Villarejo of the judicialization of information obtained on the Pujol. “I will deny under torture that this meeting has occurred,” the minister appears.
The Interior Minister had already denied that he knew who recorded him in his office talking with Alfonso and then acknowledged in his memoirs that he knew that his words were being captured by microphones that the police had previously placed. The former president of the Government opted for the mockery to try to escape some responsibility in the police maneuvers against Podemos. “I have never had knowledge of these facts, what I know is that the police have denied it and that there is an open summary and that we will see what the courts say,” said Rajoy.
The spokeswoman for Podemos, Ione Belarra, replied that it was precisely a police report that accredited searches in databases to the deputies of his training in 2015 and 2016 and that the one who was then head of the Provincial Brigade of Information of Madrid has recognized in judicial headquarters that he received orders, which he did not comply, to dive in the past of the elected parliamentarians of the training.
At this point, Rajoy changed argument and became despise the relevance of Podemos, although the number two of the interior and the members of the political brigade recognize in chats and audios that their intention is that the purple formation did not arrive the government in 2016, a possibility that existed to reach a pact with the PSOE. “As I am a Democrat, I would never spy on members of the Cortes. I have no interest in making an inspection about you because I don’t think they are so important for my life, ”Rajoy said this Wednesday in Congress.
Rajoy’s fate
Mariano Rajoy was not charged in the case of Box B. The judge determined that the alleged fiscal crime for collection of bonuses, of having occurred as indicated by Bárcenas’ accounting, was already prescribed. Nor was it investigated for the parapolicial espionage to Luis Bárcenas by decision of García Castellón, to whom the Anti -Corruption Prosecutor said for establishing “a cord or unacceptable red line” so that the investigation did not address the direction of the PP.
In the Kitchen case, Fernández Díaz has not run the same fate. The Prosecutor’s Office requests 15 years in prison for him, the same penalty as number two, the Secretary of State for Security Francisco Martínez. The National Court may not hold the trial until May 2026. The former minister was suspended from militancy in the PP in 2021 for his processing in the case, but this Wednesday the PP spokesmen in the commission were aligned with his thesis and showed him his closeness. Rajoy must declare as a witness at the trial for the Kitchen operation.
Source: www.eldiario.es
