An alleged meeting between two Government ministers and Carles Puigdemont in Brussels has sparked the day’s confrontation between PP and PSOE.
The general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, has asked the Government to explain if, as an article published on the La Información website suggests, it is true that the acting ministers of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, and of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, are They met last week with Carles Puigdemont, in Brussels, specifically at the Colombian embassy in Belgium.
For their part, government sources consider this information “one more lie” and have reduced any credibility. The Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, on his X network account, has spread a message in which he ridicules the supposed exclusive. “You don’t even believe it,” these sources say.
Sources from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs led by José Manuel Albares have also flatly denied that this meeting ever took place.
For its part, the Colombian embassy in Brussels has issued a statement in which it states that “it is not true that a meeting was held in the facilities of this embassy” as stated in the published information.
On the other hand, the PP gives full credit to this information. The number two of the PP appeared this Wednesday before the media, in Congress, to demand explanations from the Executive, since it is not acceptable, she said, that “two ministers, who speak on behalf of the Government, meet with a fugitive of justice to negotiate the amnesty in exchange for the President of the Government being able to continue being so.” For Cuca Gamarra “this is undignified.”
The PP denounces that “we have a functioning government subject to the interests of a Spaniard who fled from justice who wants to return, and another Spaniard who wants to stay in power,” and that is what Sánchez and the PSOE are negotiating. . The message that the general secretary of the PP wants to convey to the Spanish people is that they are not taking care of them, nor of economic growth, nor of social problems, nor of institutional regeneration, but that the executive’s agenda is only “amnesty yes or not”, despite the fact that the President of the Government “does not have the courage to pronounce that word”
This is what is being negotiated, Cuca Gamarra stressed. “They are negotiating with the equality of Spaniards, with the Penal Code, with legal certainty, with the prestige of the security forces and bodies, and they are negotiating with the judiciary,” and that, he stressed, “the Spaniards have not legitimized anyone to use that route, much less for their own benefit.” For the PP, this fact is very serious, because “it is recognizing that in 2017 democracy in Spain was not full, and that what the Catalan independentists did was legitimate”, and for which they were tried and convicted by Justice, except for Puigdemont. , who fled Spain, so as not to submit to Justice. The PP spokesperson cited a word from Carmen Calvo to underline the “undignity” of this situation: “One can be generous with one’s assets, but not with the assets of all Spaniards,” and much less, she added, “with the dignity of all.” the Spanish”.
Because in Gamarra’s opinion, the only thing that is being negotiated is “finding a solution for a citizen who fled and is outside the law, and finding a solution for another citizen who wants to be president but who did not win the elections.” So he summarized the negotiation as “giving immunity to one in exchange for giving the presidency of the government to another, and the rest of the 48 million Spaniards are left over.”
At the press conference, Cuca Gamarra also demanded that the president of Congress, Francina Armengol, “set a date for Pedro Sánchez’s investiture,” which she had not done forty-eight hours after the King had commissioned the acting president the formation of a government, contrary to what he did in August, which was already set in less than that period. “What made sense in August, we don’t know why it doesn’t make sense now.”
The PP denounces it because in its opinion, the date “cannot be left in the hands of a candidate” and even less “at the expense of being set by a fugitive from Justice like Puigdemont.” The spokesperson for the Popular Group considers that Armengol “is perverting the investiture process”, leaving it in the hands of Pedro Sánchez, because the law says that there can be “successive investitures”, and not setting the date until the person in charge wants, “These possible investitures are ruled out.” For Gamarra, Armengol “cannot be the puppet of the President of the Government, much less a fugitive from justice.”
