The PSOE will propose that the Catalan deputy Ferran Bel, from PDECat, chair the third investigation commission in the Congress of Deputies on the partisan use of the police during the government of Mariano Rajoy, under the Ministry of the Interior of Jorge Fernández Díaz, something which includes both the setups against the Catalan independence movement – the so-called Catalonia operation – and the maneuvers to torpedo corruption investigations that implicated the PP.
This is the third commission in five years that Congress dedicates to this scandal, after the agendas and recordings of the retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo, the epicenter of a macro-cause in the National Court, came to light. The victims of the Catalonia operation, however, have seen how the justice system systematically obstructed their demands, until a few weeks ago when an investigative court in Madrid opened a criminal case for the first time as a result of the complaint by former Barça president Sandro Rosell.
The news, revealed by La Vanguardia, unblocked this commission, which had been frozen in Congress for six months after the plenary session approved its creation in September. The commission must be constituted today and on Thursday it will hold the first meeting to set the work schedule. After that, the first step will be to negotiate a list of appearing parties. The question is whether the PSOE will accept Rajoy being summoned again, as some of his allies want. Podemos, his government partner, has not yet decided if he will demand his appearance.
The proposal that Bel preside over the commission is part of the PSOE's strategy of building bridges with moderate Catalanism.
It was the Catalan, Basque and Galician parties (ERC, Junts, PDECat, CUP, Bildu and BNG) who proposed the opening of a new commission to investigate "the alleged interference in the sovereignty of Andorra, as well as parapolice networks within the framework of the Operation Catalunya", after the imputation in the principality of Rajoy and Fernández Díaz, among others, for the fall of the BPA bank. Its leaders assure that they were extorted by the Spanish police to reveal accounts of the former president of the Generalitat Jordi Pujol.
The PSOE voted in favor of opening the commission, but only after introducing an amendment so that, in addition to the Catalan question, the maneuvers of the PP in the face of corruption investigations would also be investigated again. They voted against PP, Vox and Ciudadanos.
Congress hosted in 2017 a first commission on Catalonia, which in its conclusions considered proven the existence in the Fernández Díaz mandate of a “political police” that acted against the opponents of the PP and that smeared pro-independence leaders with false news.
In 2020, a second commission began, this time focused on the Kitchen operation: the theft of compromising documents for the PP from former party treasurer Luis Bárcenas. He concluded that everything was ordered from the leadership of the PP and that the general secretary, María Dolores de Cospedal, was the one who reported to Rajoy.
The new commission starts a few months after the municipal and regional elections on May 28, for which reason the PP accuses the PSOE of electoralism.
"Our intention is to investigate political responsibilities in matters like the one we have known in recent weeks in which we see how the Ministry of the Interior in the Government of Rajoy investigated journalists, their sexual relations... this cannot happen in a democratic country" , they say from the PSOE.
The independentistas are also critical. "The PSOE has no interest in resolving the questions about the Catalonia operation, and it is because it is splashed," says the Junts spokeswoman, Míriam Nogueras, who promises to provide evidence and that "she will not place limits on either parties or governments."
"What is clear to us, seeing what happened in the previous commissions, is that both the PP and the PSOE want everything to be closed as a matter of rotten apples, of a crazy commissioner and, specifically from the PSOE, of some individuals linked to the PP. We will try to open the focus. Because what the Villarejo case reveals are practices rooted in the police, a structural problem of State institutions”, says Albert Botran, from the CUP.
