The scandalous behavior of the Vox deputies last week against the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, occupied part of the morning debates at the Congress table and the board of spokespersons. And then, after the session started, the controversy was reactivated. Although Unidas Podemos proposed modifying the code of ethics in terms similar to those that operate in Parliament, the rest of the groups limited themselves to assuming the call to responsibility and self-control made by the president of the chamber, Meritxell Batet, both before the table such as during the spokespersons' debate.
Nobody was interested in a regulatory reform, although the president of the United We Can group, Jaume Asens, complained about what he considers a bad application of the norm.
The good intentions and the call to attention of the president hovered over their lordships for barely three hours. At the edge of six in the afternoon, the deputy of Vox Patricia Rueda called "filoetarras", "coup plotters" and "criminals" to the partners of the coalition government and the vice president of the chamber, the socialist Alfonso Rodríguez González de Celis -de new to the hemicycle at that time – forced her to withdraw from the rostrum after she refused to withdraw those expressions from the session journal. Rueda, however, took several minutes to leave the lectern, despite the insistence of Gómez de Celis, while her group, with the spokesperson, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, in front of her, applauded her standing.
The session, however, was already marked by the continuous interruptions of the chair to the successive speakers, with constant calls to the question, to prevent their lordships from diverting towards matters not concerned by the initiatives under debate. To all groups without exception.
After withdrawing the deputy's use of the floor, the entire Vox group left the plenary session and appeared before the press in the Salón de los Pasos Perdidos, where its spokesman, Santiago Abascal, surrounded by all the parliamentarians of the far-right party, repeated the accusations against the government partners, and threatened to take their fight against the Pedro Sánchez executive to the streets. He then gave the floor to Deputy Rueda, who completed the intervention that Gómez de Celis did not allow her to conclude in the chamber.
So, on the brink of the end of the session, the question about the moderation of the debate in the chamber remained unresolved, in this case in the opposite direction to that of last week.
