Former commissioner Villarejo, Tito Berni and the return of 3%... The ghost of corruption has left the castle and is advancing directly towards the municipal campaign. If you add business and partisan interests, the journey to the polls adds these five unexpected guests.
The PSOE wanted to isolate the agenda for the first half of the year from political disputes and has come across the photos of former deputy Juan Bernardo Fuentes Curbelo partying among prostitutes and drugs. The Socialists strive so that the case does not go beyond being known as Mediator while the PP pays for the adventures of Tito Berni. The name doesn't do the thing, but...
Pedro Sánchez clings to the speed with which he expelled his deputy. But the "flash" response is not enough when the judicial instruction jumps from cover to cover and the PP pokes around asking for a commission of investigation. An express commission – the Cortes will be dissolved in October – but with an effect on the local campaign and an echo in the general ones scheduled for December. What the PP wants is for Tito Berni, the mediator, and his friends from the cheese factories and farms to parade through Congress in the middle of the local and regional campaign, and for the memory of him to jump from urn to urn as if he were Luis Roldán. In the PSOE the wounds bleed. "It's a shame," they repeat.
Tito Berni was already on television when La Vanguardia published that the trial court 13 in Madrid will investigate the Catalonia operation based on a complaint by Sandro Rosell. The former commissioner Villarejo is under the spotlight, but also Alicia Sánchez-Camacho, only safe because of her capacity. While Carles Puigdemont swells the dossier to appear before the European justice as a member of an "objective interest group" and avoid extraditions, there is no reaction in the PP. The Catalonia operation and its protagonists are more than amortized. Former Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz; his number two, Francisco Martínez, and the then head of the National Police, Eugenio Pino, face 15 years in prison and three decades of disqualification for the Kitchen case. Mariano Rajoy called Fernández Díaz while Alberto Núñez Feijóo put land in between. "Let what has to come out, let what has to be clarified be investigated (...) Sometimes one finds out about things later." The commission of investigation agreed in September with the PSOE dragging its feet has not been constituted.
Covering up with the Mediator case the judicial problems of the mayoress of Marbella or the deputy Alberto Casero is a temptation that is difficult to control. As much as Pedro Sánchez's clash with Ferrovial.
"The homeland is not only to make heritage." The President of the Government has turned the battle with Luis del Pino and the decision to transfer Ferrovial's headquarters to the Netherlands into a personal matter. The company has grown thanks to public works contracts and is now looking outside of Spain for "greater legal certainty and a favorable environment for investment". To save the blow, Sánchez opposes the company's search for profits with its "fiscal justice" policies. It is the speech that earned him praise before the elites of Davos. Feijóo reprimands the "hooligan" Sánchez and recipes to negotiate to match the Dutch offer. If the company's plan is to leave Spain in four months, the general assembly and the departure of dissatisfied shareholders can take place in the middle of the municipal and regional campaigns. And the final drop in Spain, coinciding with the transfer of the European presidency to Sánchez.
The General Council of the Judiciary has put numbers to the five months of application of the law of only yes is yes: 74 sexual offenders released and 721 sentences revised downward. The reform is planned in plenary session on Tuesday –one day before 8-M–, but the agreement between the government partners has not yet arrived. The feminist agenda has put extreme stress on the coalition government, but also on the relationship within United We Can. If the initial silence of Yolanda Díaz caused the schism of the vice president with Pablo Iglesias and Irene Montero, the reform proposed by the PSOE threatens to blow up the voting discipline of the members. Sánchez imposed the modification of the law to cauterize the wound and the PP is looking for the photo of the division supporting the initiative. The next parliamentary show will arrive from the week of March 13 and the accidental protagonist will be Ramón Tamames as a candidate for Vox's motion of no confidence. The extreme right seeks focus at the expense of the PP and with Feijóo out of Congress, only Sánchez can emerge victorious by delving into the right.
"I close parenthesis." Laura Borràs returns to public activity after the trial in the TSJC for falsehood and prevarication. In Junts, prudence is maintained pending the sentence, but the questions accumulate in the event of a conviction. On the one hand, the party's statutes provide for expulsion in cases of conviction for corruption, a debate that would cause a schism; and, on the other, Jordi Turull is obsessed with recreating the post-convergent space. Even Artur Mas proliferates in presentations of local candidates. But there are preventions. The coalition with the PDECat is ruled out due to its political, fiscal and judicial consequences. The eternal return of 3% at the gates of a campaign – some twenty records at Egara Ambulance headquarters – serves as a reminder of the figure of Jordi Pujol in full repair.
Junts wants to isolate itself from the consequences of the Borràs case: "The best way to help the candidates is not to get in the way." So "Trias, Trias, Trias" is repeated without ceasing. Barcelona is the electoral key for Junts, but also for ERC –suffering with Ernest Maragall– and Sánchez. The case also raises questions about the future of his seat and the presidency of the Chamber, which ERC no longer guarantees for Junts. Pere Aragonès maintains that the agreement expired with the departure of Junts from the Government and in Junts they shout “tripartite!”. And more unknowns: could Borràs collect the 4 years of allowance that would correspond to 80% of the salary of the president of Parliament? Proposing a reform of the President's law, in which the allocations of the president of the Generalitat and the Catalan Chamber and his former are equated, could also lead to questioning the benefits of the tenants of the Palau de la plaza Sant Jaume. And there are no plans...
