The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, returns this Wednesday to the Congress of Deputies to once again give explanations about the management that his department carried out during the tragedy of the Melilla fence in which at least 23 immigrants died. He will do so with the vast majority of the chamber – with the exception of the PSOE – against him: on the one hand, the usual parliamentary partners of the Government will ask him for more explanations in the face of the alleged contradictions of the minister during the five months that have elapsed since the event; on the other hand, the opposition directly calls for his "immediate" resignation.
Ministerial sources assure that Marlaska comes prepared – with the same speech that he has been maintaining – for the stake that awaits him at the end of the control session with the Government. Neither the BBC documentary that brought up the case again, nor the first conclusions of the Ombudsman and not a new journalistic work known today have made the Interior version change one iota. And this is it: the action of the Civil Guard to neutralize the "violent" massive jump was "absolutely proportional, professional and in accordance with the law", the work of the agents "did not have any incidence" in the deaths and "no deaths took place in national territory”.
It has maintained it that way and will continue to do so, according to the same sources consulted this Tuesday after, first, the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe has disfigured the lack of safe routes for access to asylum in Melilla and, hours later, various media outlets under the Lighthouse Reports consortium have questioned the official version of the tragedy. To the first, Interior has responded by saying that last year it registered and processed 1,999 asylum applications submitted outside national territory. Regarding the second, the department headed by Marlaska has lamented that "hypotheses and conjectures are disseminated that lack any serious probative basis."
The most innovative thing about journalistic work is that it places a deceased migrant on Spanish soil. A statement reached by the consortium after the statements of one of the 35 witnesses interviewed. This person identifies a friend as the deceased seen in the video, which shows the police officers dragging him to Moroccan soil from the area where the avalanche occurred. This area is identified by the documentary as Spanish, in line with that of the BBC. Interior calls it the "joint operational zone."
"This article does not distort the reality of the facts at any time", they have transferred from the Interior, from where they criticized again that "certain political parties try to instrumentalize" the tragedy "resorting to journalistic speculation".
It has been from the Popular Party where they have shown themselves to be most virulent against the Minister of the Interior, whom they have demanded to resign before midnight. And if he does not do so, they have urged the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, to dismiss him. The last words that the Executive leader uttered on this matter were to close ranks around his minister who, as he put it, has his "absolute confidence" in him.
In a press conference at the national headquarters of the popular, the Institutional Vice-Secretary, Esteban González Pons, has insisted that he does not believe that "Spanish democracy is so weak after what is known" -in reference to the publication of the consortium- . From the PP they say that "all avenues" are open if the minister does not finally resign. Among them, a commission of investigation in Congress. Last week, together with the PSOE and Vox, they blocked the one that was registered.
