Harsh exchange of accusations that has occurred between the Minister of the Interior, Joan Ignasi Elena, and the PSC in the plenary session of the Parlament this Tuesday. The underlying issue, the management of the security policy by the person in charge of the Government, with the controversy caused by the blocking of several projects of the Barcelona Urban Guard by the ministry, including access to the data bank for the municipal police that would allow them to directly identify criminals. The Socialists have accused Elena of "disloyalty", "neglect" and "obstruction" and the Minister has replied reproaching the PSC for having turned the Barcelona City Council's security department into "an electoral agency of Mr Collboni" to go "against the Government and against its partners”.
The PSC questioned the Government about the management of the Department of the Interior after spending weeks demanding that the president of the Generalitat dismiss Elena for her management in the latest crisis that has affected the Mossos, the relief for the fifth time in four years of the police leadership after the dismissal of chief commissioner Josep Maria Estela.
The socialists have been demanding "stability" for the body from Pere Aragonès and denouncing the "purge" that in their opinion the Government has carried out in the Mossos, and the leader of the PSC, Salvador Illa, has once again demanded that the president dismiss this Tuesday of Elena in the control session to the Govern, something that Aragonès has flatly rejected.
But new events have been added to this controversy that have caused Salvador Illa's men to insist on their criticism of Elena's management and the demand for her dismissal, something that Aragonès has assured this Wednesday in plenary that it will not happen. The new events that underpin the PSC's demand have to do with the complaint by the Deputy Mayor for Security of the Barcelona City Council, Albert Batlle, who on the Day of the Urban Guard criticized the Interior for not having allowed the police access yet municipal Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (SAID); that he has not signed the protocol for the municipal police to collect complaints at their police stations; another more specific on those related to sexist violence and the choice of a space to move the current police coordination room in Barcelona.
The deputy of the PSC-Units, Ramon Espadaler, charged in Parliament against the minister of acting with "institutional disloyalty" that causes "specific damage" to victims of gender violence and citizens. In addition, he made Elena ugly by a "mismanagement" of the ministry, which due to "neglect and obstruction" ends up affecting the most vulnerable.
The tone of the deputy and the minister was politically harsh, to the point that the former warned that he did not accept "not a single lesson" from the person questioned, and the latter responded by justifying the attack because of his socialist past: "You know that Rome does not pay traitors, a socialist warned me.”
Elena argued that the delay in authorizing access to the digital bank is due to the fact that a price protocol is required, in which it must still be defined where and how the Urban Guard will have access to it. But she raised the tone against the PSC, which she pointed out for "turning the security council into an electoral agency of Mr. Collboni, against the Government and against his partners, and this is indeed disloyalty," she charged.
The leader insisted on criticizing those of Illa, assuring that "the underlying problem" that hides the accusations is, on the one hand, "the fear of the extreme right", of a "speech that they do not know how to fight", and on the other On the other hand, to the "failure in security management in the metropolitan area," which "reduces it, like small children do, to looking for guilty parties," he said. In this sense, Elena reproached the "lack of investment, laziness, lack of leadership, and resignation" with which, in her opinion, the PSC acts in the municipalities where it governs, but "we will not continue with this escalation of disloyalty of the socialist group in the field of security”, he wanted to settle.
This interpellation should give rise to a parliamentary motion – a mere declaration of intent – that the Socialists will take to Parliament. It will be necessary to see if this time the PSC dares to promote the disapproval of Minister Elena, something that they tried a few weeks ago with Junts but ultimately did not bear fruit.
