Congress will constitute this Wednesday the three investigative commissions that the PSOE promised to ERC and Junts in exchange for achieving a majority on the House Board. In these constitutive sessions, the members of the Boards of each of these bodies will be elected, two of which will be chaired by the PSOE and the other by Sumar.
These three new commissions, whose work will coincide over the coming months, will open investigations into the ‘Operation Catalonia‘ attributed to the Ministry of the Interior of the first Government of Mariano Rajoy, the espionage of the independentists with the ‘Pegasus’ program and the jihadist attacks perpetrated in August 2017 in Barcelona and Cambrils (Tarragona).
Its creation was agreed by the PSOE with the Catalan independentists of ERC and Junts in exchange for his support for the election of Francina Armengol as president of the Chamberwhich guaranteed that the coalition government parties had a majority on the Congressional Board.
The Plenary Session of Congress approved them on December 12 and last Friday the groups assigned their representatives to each of them. The next step was agree on the distribution of the positions of the Tables (Presidency, two Vice-Presidencies and two Secretariats in each body), who will be elected this Wednesday.
Majority of PSOE and partners at all tables
According to parliamentary sources, The idea is that the PSOE and its partners have the majority in all the Tables (three positions compared to two for the PP), and that the socialists assume the Presidency in those of Operation Catalonia and ‘Pegasus’ and Sumar takes care of the attacks.
Thus, the Secretary of Education of the PSOE, María Luz Martínez Seijois emerging as president of the one relating to Operation Catalonia, in which the group’s spokesperson in the Interior Commission, David Serrada, will have the titular Spokesperson and the Catalan Arnau Ramírez, the deputy. In that commission Sumar has assigned Aina Vidal and Gerardo Pisarelloboth from En Comú, who already chair commissions in Congress.
For the commission on ‘Pegasus’, the PSOE has entrusted the spokesperson to Artemis Ralloin turn spokesperson on the Constitutional Commission, with Araceli Poblador as attached and everything indicates that Luis Carlos Sahuquillo, will be the candidate to preside over it. Sumar has entrusted it to his Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Agustin Santosand Interior, Enrique Santiago.
Regarding the commission on the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils, the PSOE has elected Manuel Arribas (spokesperson), Begoña Nasarre (attached) and David Serrada (Mesa), while Sumar has appointed the general secretary of the group, Txema Guijarro, and to Catalan Eloi Badia. Predictably one of these last two will be the president.
Then schedule appearances
Once constituted, the tables of each of them will have to call the date of the first meeting in which their work plans will be agreed upon and we could talk about appearing. Each group will propose the people they are interested in questioning in each body.but the definitive relationship will have to be the result of an agreement.
The commission on the Operation Catalonia, which is attributed to the Government of Mariano Rajoy and which Congress has already investigated in previous legislatures, was created at the request of Junts and the PNV. In the past, independence groups They tried to call Rajoy to appear but the PSOE opposed it. However, last January the socialists opened up to questioning him in that new commission.
In the agreement signed by PSOE and Junts for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez there is talk of taking advantage of these investigations to deepen the amnesty for prosecuted independentists over the last ten years. Those of Carles Puigdemont want what Congress decides to serve to demonstrate the alleged ‘lawfare’ or ‘judicial war’ and thus review other causes that affect coreligionists.
During her speech before the Plenary when they were approved in December, Junts spokesperson, Míriam Nogueras, insisted that the objective of ‘Operation Catalonia’ was «neutralize the independence movement“and assumed that the “pillars” of this movement continue to be the object of “the ‘sewers’ of the State.”
The 17A affects the CNI and Pegasus the PSOE
The investigation relating to the attacks was also approved at the proposal of Junts and PNV, since those of Carles Puigdemont, who presided over the Generalitat when the terrorists acted, echo the theory that Commissioner José Manuel Villarejo put forward at the time about an alleged responsibility of the CNI due to the fact that one of those involved had been a confidant.
For their part, it was ERC, Bildu and the BNG who promoted the one that will be in charge of collecting data on the espionage carried out with the Pegasus program. And when its creation was debated, ERC spokesperson Gabriel Rufián recalled that this investigation also affects the PSOE, since the alleged espionage of independentists was carried out under its mandate and because President Sánchez and several ministers were also spied on. “We want to know who paid for the Pegasus program, until when, and here the PSOE also comes in, make them look at it because perhaps it is also happening today,” he warned.