It’s official now. Deputy Cristina Casol no longer belongs to the Junts parliamentary group after agreeing a few days ago to expel her as a result of the accusations of internal harassment reported by the parliamentarian. The Parliament has made her expulsion official by publishing on its website the date of withdrawal of her membership in the parliamentary group, after the Board of the Catalan Chamber received, this Tuesday, Junts’ decision.
According to Casol’s file published on the Parliament’s website, the parliamentarian is already included in the group of “non-attached deputies” with a registration date of January 30, 2024, the same date that appears as the date of withdrawal from her integration into the group. from Together. Furthermore, Casol no longer appears in the list of deputies of the Junts group on said website.
The parliamentarian will continue to serve as a deputy in the group of non-affiliated deputies, which currently includes Antonio Gallego, who left Vox at the end of 2022 due to disagreements with the parliamentary group, which he reported had relegated him to “a role as deputy of Use and throw”. In any case, the expulsion of Casol will leave Junts per Catalunya with one less deputy (31) and an open wound in the group, since the other internal front will still have to be resolved, which has as its protagonist the vice president of Junts and secretary second of the Parliament Board, Author Madaula.
Casol’s expulsion comes after he denounced the Junts group in the Parliament in November for “gender-based harassment” and discrimination. He did so through the internal channels of the Chamber, but the independent investigation, which was launched by the institution’s equality office and was delegated to an external company, concluded that the reported facts could not be proven, although it did make some mention of the internal climate within the formation, where two different and in some cases opposing visions of how politics should be done coexist.
The complaint remained a dead letter and the permanent leadership of the party demanded that she hand over her deputy certificate, otherwise she would be expelled from the group. But Casol made it clear from the first day that she would not resign and that if necessary she would continue until the end of the legislature as a non-attached deputy. In the end, an internal vote led to the expulsion of the group by 26 votes in favor.
The fact that there was not complete unanimity shows that within the parliamentary group there are opposing opinions on the matter, a division that is maintained in the case of Madaula, who publicly denounced that his group exercised “silent violence” after the decision to withdraw support. to a proposal on the right to abortion in Andorra, which she supported. The deputy, who has shown her support for Casol in her case, is on medical leave due to the pressure suffered by the internal conflict with her party.
