The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, defended himself this Tuesday against the attacks of the PP for the death of two civil guards in Barbate (Cádiz) run over by a drug boat and declared: “The best tribute to drug traffickers that I have seen “I am a ship’s giornata of the president of the PP with a drug trafficker.”
In an “appetizer” of what will be tomorrow’s offensive of the PP in the plenary sessions of Congress and Senate, the senator of this party Alejo Joaquín Miranda has attacked the head of the Interior for having prohibited the civil guards from participating in tributes to the deceased agents, according to the parliamentarian.
Marlaska has flatly denied that he did it and has said that the best tribute he had seen to drug traffickers was the one performed by the current president of the main opposition party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, with the smuggler Marcial Dorado on a yacht.
“Did you give instructions to the civil guards not to pay tribute to their colleagues killed in the line of duty?” was the question that appeared on the agenda of the control session of the Upper House. A question that Marlaska found “offensive” and to which he responded with a no.
In his second intervention, the senator asked the minister if he “really” did not have a “bad conscience” for having “dismantled” the elite unit of the Civil Guard in the fight against drug trafficking in Campo de Gibraltar, and OCON- South, for allowing this force to have an “aging fleet” or for issuing instructions that prohibited minutes of silence in memory of the agents.
Miranda has criticized the PSOE in the European Parliament for voting against a proposal to recognize guards as a risky profession.
“They don’t care that they risk their lives in the Strait (…) while they laughed out loud on the red carpet,” said the senator in reference to the members of the Government, including the president, Pedro Sánchez, who attended to the Goya film awards gala just one day after the murder of the two agents.
“What are they going to do now? Amnesty the drug traffickers to improve coexistence in the Strait?” the senator asked before assuring that for everyone’s safety Marlaska “cannot remain one more minute” in his position.
For Marlaska, this reply from the senator has been “even more offensive” than his question and has meant an insult to the Civil Guard commanders.
In this sense, the minister has respected the decisions made that day in the port of Barbate because the Civil Guard “always tries to fulfill its duty.”
However, he has acknowledged that the Interior is studying what happened and if measures have to be taken, they will be taken.
“Do you really think that my pain is less than yours? Are you so arrogant? Are you so overflowing with patriotism?” the minister asked the popular senator to whom he wanted to make it clear: “I don’t do politics with pain. You do.”