The tense relationship between the Government and the PP had a new explosive episode this Tuesday, due to the pending renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary. The Government spokesperson, Pilar Alegría, has condemned the appeal to ETA with which the PP spokesperson in Congress, Miguel Tellado, dispatched this morning President Pedro Sánchez’s demand that the PP agree this month on the renewal of the governing body of the judges. Tellado said, in an interview on TVE, that Sánchez “is not in a position to give ultimatums” and added, in reference to Bildu, that “those who gave ultimatums are his government partners”, who “then murdered politicians from the PP”. For the Government spokesperson, she “wanted to compare the constitutional obligation (to renew the CGPJ) with the ultimatums is absolutely unworthy”, and she has demanded that Alberto Núñez Feijóo “rectify” Tellado.
“We are not going to tolerate it,” Alegría assured, in the press conference after the meeting of the Council of Ministers, in which he highlighted that “it is absolutely essential to comply with the Constitution”, in reference to the renewal of the CGPJ. Alegría has criticized that the PP stopped last week the negotiations that the vice-secretary of Institutional of this party, Esteban González Pons, had been holding since January, with the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, with the mediation – demanded by the PP – of the commissioner of Justice of the EU, Didier Reynders, to try to reach an agreement on the CGPJ.
The Government and the PP had given themselves a period of two months to agree on the renewal of the governing body of the judges, and “this period ended on March 31,” the minister spokesperson recalled. “We do not contemplate any other scenario other than renewal. The times, the mediation and the interlocutor were proposed by the PP and we accepted it. There is no more excuse for not complying with the Constitution,” she stressed.
Alegría has also criticized the style of opposition of the PP against the Government of Pedro Sánchez, since it took office for the first time, in June 2018. “We have been living together since 2018 with a totally destructive opposition, of which we know of no proposals,” he has said, in particular about the resolution of the political conflict with Catalonia. “We know from the PP what it does not want for Catalonia. But what is the constructive proposal of the PP for Catalonia?” he asked.
The minister spokesperson made these statements after Tellado referred to the renewal of the CGPJ, in an interview on TVE. The popular spokesperson in Congress has assured that “renewing the CGPJ and depoliticizing it is an objective of the PP” and has indicated that “if the PSOE wants to advance on this path it will find the Popular Party”, but if what it intends is to “control” the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary, will not have your support.
Tellado was thus responding to the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, who had demanded that the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, close the agreement to renew the General Council of the Judiciary during this month of April.
“The President of the Government is used to being very hard with the main party in Spain, with the party that leads the opposition, and very soft with his investiture partners, with the independentists of Junts, Bildu and ERC,” he ironized.
