Política

The broker Víctor de Aldama, who at one time reached a deal with the Prosecutor’s Office to get out of prison for another case, has appeared before the Supreme Court judging him for the mask case, willing to explain how he paid the former Minister of Transport José Luis Ábalos and his then advisor Koldo García, also in the dock. He has elaborated on all the corruption within the Ministry and beyond. That red line, according to the businessman, was crossed at Ábalos’s request because – he declared – “he needed money for the party’s financing” and the president knew all about it.

The spokesperson of the PNV in Congress, Maribel Vaquero, has demanded this Wednesday that Pedro Sánchez take care of the substance of his relationships, but also the forms, and not lose respect for them: “You will know how you want to get to the election call, whether you want company or not,” she warned him. And the President of the Government has tried to soothe the enormous irritation that the jeltzale formation increasingly reveals: “Of course I want company, and also good company like that of the PNV.”

The Aragonese Institute of Catalan is a small body integrated into the Aragonese Academy of Language. Created by decree in 2018, it was not effectively constituted until March 2022, and its very reduced cost is financed within Aragon’s own budgets.

The crucial moment arrives in the trial for the mask case. The three defendants, former minister José Luis Ábalos, his advisor Koldo García, and the commissioner Víctor de Aldama, will testify between today’s and tomorrow’s sessions, which are expected to be long. This Wednesday’s session will begin with the interrogation of the businessman, one of the key pieces of this process, which was initiated, among other things, thanks to his agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office. Will Aldama provide new data on the activities of the alleged plot? That is one of the questions hanging over this Wednesday’s session.

Catalonia will not have a parity investment consortium between the State and the Generalitat. The bill presented by Esquerra Republicana with the aim of creating an entity that would allow jointly planning, deciding, and executing investments in state-owned infrastructures in Catalan territory will not become a reality after Congress rejected its consideration with the votes of PP, Vox, Junts, PNV, and UPN. In other words, the proposal worked on jointly by ERC, the Govern, and the Government did not even pass the first filter.

The Government suffered yesterday in Congress one of the most resounding parliamentary defeats of the legislature after PP, Vox and Junts joined forces to overturn the housing decree promoted by one of the partners, Sumar.

Junts inflicted a double defeat of enormous political significance on the Government in Congress this Tuesday by joining its votes with those of PP and Vox to overturn, with only a few minutes’ separation, two of the most sensitive initiatives of the legislature. These were the housing decree promoted by Sumar and the investment consortium agreed between ERC and the PSC to strengthen the Generalitat’s participation in state investments in Catalonia. The setback hits the coalition hard on the eve of the Andalusian campaign, with polls already very adverse for the left against Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla’s PP, which aims to revalidate its absolute majority.

When the National Court judge Manuel García Castellón concluded the investigation into Operation Kitchen, he put in black and white that “dysfunctions and irregularities in the management and control” of the reserved funds were evident, which had led to the financing of the “intrinsically illegal police operation” [to steal documentation from the former treasurer of the Popular Party Luis Bárcenas that could affect the party].

Far-right MEP Luis ‘Alvise’ Pérez loses parliamentary immunity. The European Parliament voted this Tuesday in favor of lifting the protection of the leader of Se acabó La Fiesta (SALF), as requested by the Supreme Court to be able to prosecute him for alleged harassment on social media via Telegram of Valencia’s delegated prosecutor for hate crimes and discrimination, Susana Gisbert.

Jordi Pujol Ferrusola was the “driver” of the letters that his mother, Marta Ferrusola, sent to Andorra. The “missals,” in the terminology she invented to talk about money. This is what his son explained during the two days of questioning he underwent in the trial being conducted by the Audiencia Nacional against the Pujol family for alleged money laundering and illicit association.