Former minister José Luis Ábalos announced this Wednesday his resignation from his seat in Valencia after the Supreme Court rejected his appeal against the order that sent him to provisional prison on November 27. Ábalos has stated that he understands that he “cannot” support his record in his procedural situation: “I am projecting all my activity into exercising my right of defense and the protection of my innocence.”
The renunciation of the record will not prevent the trial for the collection of commissions from million-dollar contracts for the sale of masks, scheduled for next spring, from being held in the Supreme Court. The Plenary Session of the Second Chamber agreed that the order to open the oral trial is the limit to renounce the jurisdiction.
It was the decision made by the High Court, when it forced the TSJ of the Valencian Community to hold a trial in the Fitur case despite the resignation of two regional deputies from their minutes because the order to open an oral trial had already been issued. In the case of masks, that resolution was issued last December.
Ábalos’ decision does have effects for the piece in which rigging in public works awards is investigated and in which Santos Cerdán, who replaced Ábalos in the Organization Secretariat of the PSOE, is also being investigated. Since there are no already investigated persons, these investigations must be referred to the National Court.
Her replacement: Ana María González Herdaro
The next on the lists to enter Congress and assume the Ábalos seat is Ana María González Herdaro, mayor of Llaurí (Valencia). She revalidated the mayor’s office in 2023 after eight years as first mayor. In 2021, she was sentenced to pay a fine of 960 euros and eight months of withdrawal of her license. for driving drunk.
The PSOE thus recovers a seat for its parliamentary group, because Ábalos was in the Mixed Group since February 2024 (and on some occasions he distanced himself from the socialists in the sense of his vote) and then he was suspended as a deputy on December 10, so since then he could not vote or receive his salary.
Congress made the decision to suspend him after his entry into preventive detention and after being finally prosecuted by the Supreme Court. In the publication of his account of
“I give my gratitude to the Valencians who have allowed me to serve the Spanish people to protect and expand individual and collective guarantees, the principles that are the essence of the Spanish Constitution and the parliamentary history of Spain, and where I have always sought to strengthen social justice, freedom, equality and pluralism as supreme values and foundations of a social and democratic State of Law. I can proudly say that it has been an exciting responsibility. Thank you for so much!”, he concludes his writing.
The PP says that Ábalos leaves the record as a “favor” to Sánchez
The PP has assured that the former Secretary of Organization of the PSOE “returns the favor to Sánchez by delivering the minutes to the party that both led” and has hinted: “We would like to know in exchange for what. Or how much. Because with Pedro Sánchez nothing is in exchange for nothing,” points out the party led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo in a message sent to the media.
“Sánchez seeks to mitigate his parliamentary precariousness by recovering the record of his imprisoned deputy,” the statement says. “The resignation of Ábalos means that someone who should never have had one no longer has a seat and that Sánchez recovers a vote that he lost with the entry into prison of one of his own. The former ‘number two’ of the PSOE started the Legislature in the Congress of Deputies and will end it in a penitentiary center,” the PP settles.
Source: www.eldiario.es
