At the start of this uncertain new legislature, and with the imminent start of another intense electoral cycle, the Government and the leadership of the PSOE do not let go of the bone of the so-called operation Catalonia, in the face of the alleged use of the resources of the State to pursue independence during the mandates of Mariano Rajoy which is revealing the investigation of La Vanguardia and Eldiario.es.
Some “very serious facts”, according to Pedro Sánchez, which Ferraz insists on denouncing because they consider it “inadmissible” that the Popular Party, which is now led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, does not pass the bill, politically and electorally. The political convention that the PSOE is holding this weekend in A Coruña – precisely to promote its candidate for the Xunta, José Ramón Gómez Besteiro, in the Galician elections of February 18 – thus puts the spotlight on Operation Catalonia. “They won’t get away with it”, they cry.
The first vice-president of the Government and also deputy general secretary of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero, who was the main speaker during yesterday’s day of the convention that opened the eve of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, denounced alleged maneuvers of the Rajoy’s executive which, as he stressed, “acts against the rule of law”.
Montero, to begin with, vehemently replicated the words of the parliamentary spokesman of the PP and strong man in Feijóo’s team, the Galician Miguel Tellado, who dismissed the allegations as a simple “smoke screen” by the central government and the PSOE on the Catalonia operation, which the socialists also demand to involve “immediate” judicial proceedings. The vice-president insisted on highlighting the seriousness of what the PSOE calls “the Watergate of the PP”, when she criticized “the improper, fraudulent and shameful use of the State’s media for partisan interests”.
“A smoke screen? As if the seriousness of the anti-democratic acts that attack the rule of law, as we probably haven’t seen in a long time, were an invention of the PSOE, we don’t know very well why”, emphasized Montero.
The first vice-president and number two of the PSOE warned that the first thing in a democracy is to “respect public institutions and the powers of the State”, in addition to its independence. “And never in life use them to get rich fraudulently, so that corruption opens the way, and never use them to spy, allegedly, on those they consider enemies of Spain, which are all those who don’t think like the PP”, he denounced.
Montero also turned the spotlight on Feijóo, who the socialists consider to be tiptoeing over this scandal of alleged political espionage and systematic harassment of pro-independence leaders. “Since Aznar, we have not found a leader of the PP who has less shame when it comes to lying”, he criticized.
And he made fun of Feijóo’s assertion that he doesn’t govern because he doesn’t want to, because he didn’t want to agree with independence. “I’m also not tall and blonde because I don’t want to”, concluded the vice-president of the Government, amid great applause from the plenary session of the PSOE convention.
This controversial operation Catalonia of the PP was already present during the inauguration of the socialist conclave on Friday, in charge of the secretary of organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, precisely in charge of getting the negotiations with the Catalan pro-independence parties back on track, especially with Junts, both for at the investiture as for the amnesty or the delegation of powers on immigration to the Generalitat de Catalunya.
Cerdán attacked the “reactionary coalition” of the PP and the ultra-right Vox, which he assured would have caused a “great catastrophe” in Spain if he had come to govern.
The leader from Navarre denounced that the only proposals of the right for Catalonia are the application of “a permanent 155” and the illegalization of pro-independence parties. But Cerdán also criticized that the territorial policy of Mariano Rajoy’s governments was “to use the police and State resources to fabricate false reports and persecute political opponents”.
The number three of the PSOE also criticized that the PP committed the institutions of the State with this imitation, in his opinion, of Watergate when “using the services of the police and justice to destroy evidence that may involve – them and obstruct the investigations”. Cerdán considered that the PP has “a manifest inability for dialogue, for coexistence and to accept the right to differ”.
And he concluded that, in view of the new revelations about operation Catalonia, it is clear that “Feijóo came to preside over the PP to cover up corruption”. “That’s why he came out of Galicia, that’s why they put him in, his goal is to cover up corruption”, accused Cerdán.
