The meeting of the president of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in a Madrid hotel with prosecutors belonging to the majority association, with a conservative bias, has revolted the central government, which has come to describe this meeting, revealed yesterday by the newspaper El PaÃs, as a “very serious” fact.
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, assured Malaga that “the leader of the opposition has crossed all the limits. He maneuvers in Brussels against the interests of Spain and maneuvers to breach the Constitution and keep the Judiciary hijacked. And now we learn that he meets behind closed doors with conservative prosecutors in whose presence he assumes the commitment to repeal social advances”.
According to the revealed account of this meeting, the leader of the popular pledged in this meeting to repeal some of the reforms promoted by the current Government. It is no secret that Feijóo has undertaken, among others, to liquidate some of the legal changes made to try to find a political way out of the Catalan crisis. Reforms that have been openly opposed by the Association of Prosecutors, which held the meeting with Feijóo.
The president of the Popular Party himself admitted, in statements from Madrid before the events of May 2, that the meeting had taken place and assured that the prosecutors expressed their opinions freely as he himself did during the dinner Some of the prosecutors who participated in the meeting openly expressed their desire that Feijóo obtain the presidency of the Government in the December elections.
All of this led the Government, which has long been very upset with the PP due to the blockage in the transfer of members of the General Council of the Judiciary, to see in the meeting a new maneuver by the people to maintain control of the judicial system.
The Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, asked Alberto Núñez Feijóo for an explanation for this “disturbing” meeting. “It (this meeting) is a very serious event”, while “it continues to maneuver in the dark with the Judiciary”, said Bolaños, who described the meeting as “secret”.
The Association of Prosecutors does not see it that way, which framed this meeting within the meetings that take place with the same format and to which other political leaders from other parties have gone. In this case, around sixty people participated. The aim, explained sources of the association, is to know the ideas of those who attend with regard to matters related to justice.
This was not the vision that the PSOE had of the meeting, which asked “Mr. Feijóo to give public explanations to the Spaniards about the content of this meeting and which laws exactly he intends to repeal if the unlikely case occurs to the Government”. Ione Belarra and Ãñigo Errejón, partner and ally of the Government respectively, also criticized Feijóo for his participation in the forum organized by the prosecutors.
These criticisms caused surprise in the PP, “first of all because Feijóo himself has said in public, and in his parliamentary seat, the laws he plans to repeal”.
These sources recalled that the Association has met with other politicians such as the deputy spokesperson of Citizens in Congress, Edmundo Bal, the former president of the party, Inés Arrimadas, the actor Albert Boadella, or the Minister of Culture, Miquel Iceta, when he led the opposition in Catalonia.
These same sources also recalled that in 2018, before becoming Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez met in Ferraz with several associations of judges and prosecutors, including this conservative association, to explain his future projects.
What seems inevitable for Feijóo is that the serious situation that the Judiciary is going through, due to the stubborn resistance of the Popular Party to reach an agreement to renew it, means that the Central Government and the progressive forces can read how they read the controversial dinner.
