Almeida has no jurisdiction to name Iglesias a non grata person

José Luis Martínez-Almeida was quick to assume that the City Council "would have no problem" in naming Pablo Iglesias persona non grata for "the insults manifested.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
25 October 2022 Tuesday 05:30
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Almeida has no jurisdiction to name Iglesias a non grata person

José Luis Martínez-Almeida was quick to assume that the City Council "would have no problem" in naming Pablo Iglesias persona non grata for "the insults manifested

on September 28, 2022 against the Municipal Police", because there is. The Secretary of the Plenary of the Madrid City Council has transferred this Tuesday a report that concludes that the Consistory does not have the power to act in that way against the former vice president of the Government so point 32 on the agenda of today's municipal plenary session has had to be reformulated.

According to the report, the municipalities lack "the necessary authorization to declare any citizen persona non grata." Therefore, the agreement that Vox and PP intended to promote would in any case be "contrary to law", since "it is not based on any municipal competence or power".

"The reasonable doubt arises as to whether said declaration could affect the right to honor of the person declared non grata, so we still have to be more cautious, if possible, with the adoption of this type of agreement," he adds.

The municipal actions of the two rights are due to the disapproval raised after the words that Iglesias poured out on his radio program on September 28. "With five aunts like (the leader of Podemos) Isa Serra on horseback, we would see the entire Madrid Municipal Police run. It would also be of no use to them. Isa would bring me the scalps of all of them and (Pablo) Echenique and I would burn them in a bonfire with Arnaldo Otegi in Arralde", he affirmed.

Iglesias expressed himself in this way after learning the day before that the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid had suspended the execution of the sentence of one year and seven months in prison imposed on the leader of Podemos Isa Serra for attacking the authority during a protest for an eviction executed in Madrid in 2014.

After the legal report, the Vox group in the Madrid City Council, led by Javier Ortega Smith, has withdrawn the proposal to name Pablo Iglesias persona non grata and, failing that, will ask for his reprobation, thus aligning with the announced position by PP and Cs.

The ultra-nationalist formation maintains that its initiative "does not present any judicial doubt", because it is something that "is done in other city councils", and they give as an example when the one from Pontevedra appointed ex-president Mariano Rajoy persona non grata, or when the Assembly of Ceuta He did the same with the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal. But in Madrid "the secretary of the plenary session has decided to question" this power, and, "given the doubt that the secretary himself has sown", Federico Andrés López, Vox has reformulated the proposal to, finally, fail Iglesias, the same terminology that has been used by the coalition of Government, PP and Citizens, to register a proposal against the former leader of United We Can.

From Ciudadanos, the deputy mayor of Madrid, Begoña Villacís, has defended her position less restrictive than that of Vox, assuring that "nobody is who to say that in Madrid" a person "is not welcome", and has defended that "if we assert ourselves of the majorities to nullify what the minorities say" ends up "guaranteeing censorship".