Junts deputy Francesc de Dalmases will be sanctioned in one way or another as a result of the unfortunate episode of "intimidation" of a TV3 journalist that he committed last July, when he accompanied the president of the Catalan Chamber, Laura Borràs, to the the network's FAQS program for an interview.
This has been decided today by the Parliament in the Commission of the Statute of the Deputy, where ERC, PSC, CUP and the commons have presented an opinion that has been approved and that considers the episode a minor offense that could be sanctioned with a public reprimand or a fine of between 600 and 12,000 euros. It will be the Bureau of Parliament that must decide the scope of the sanction imposed on him.
During the commission, which has been behind closed doors for most of the session, two possible solutions to the case were proposed. On the one hand, the presidency of the commission, held by the deputy of Junts Jaume Alonso Cuevillas, presented a proposal for an opinion that proposed a mere public reprimand, justified by the legal doubts generated by a code of conduct that for post-convergence training does not have range of law, and that the events took place outside the Parlament, on the sets of TV3.
On the other hand, ERC, PSC CUP and the commons presented a joint opinion proposal that certifies, "based on the documentation analyzed and verifying the sequence of events", that the attitude attributed to Dalmases is "clearly constitutive of a act of intimidation”.
According to these groups, the Junts deputy violated articles 7 and 8 of the deputies' code of conduct. Number 7 refers to the "exemplary attitude" that deputies should have, and number 8 to relations with the media. In this sense, the regulation establishes that any violation of these articles -and of many others- supposes a slight infraction that the Table of the Parlament must sanction.
The code of conduct itself establishes two degrees as a sanctioning regime for minor infractions: public reprimand or a fine of between 600 and 12,000 euros.
During the open deliberations of the Deputies' Statute Commission, the groups have shown that there is a unanimous consensus regarding the events carried out by Dalmases, and that what happened is "reprehensible", as even Junts acknowledges, but the differences emerge when it comes to estimating whether the code of conduct should enter into it.
The four particular votes that Junts, PPC, Vox and Ciutadans will present respond to this debate. These groups doubt that the code of conduct should enter into this matter, both due to the legal nature of the regulation and the fact that the episode took place outside the parliamentary premises. In this sense, there are those who are concerned that a sanction against Dalmases may set a "dangerous" precedent for deputies who do not belong to parties with a majority in the Catalan Chamber.
