There are two Catalonias. One is the one that moves in the offices of the Generalitat, negotiates with the parties, closes agreements, approves budgets, and tries to advance autonomous financing that will still have to pass the Congress procedure. The other is quite more…
Just 15 days after the inauguration, President Salvador Illa faced his first controversy, which was caused by the appointment of Alfons Jiménez as Chief of Staff of the Department of Territory, the romantic partner of the department’s minister and spokesperson of the Government, Sílvia Paneque. The accusations of nepotism received by the first non-independent Catalan Executive in more than a decade were not the best introduction, which led to the replacement.
Commissioner Sílvia Catà Culubret (53 years old) will be the new head of the Mossos d’Esquadra, replacing Commissioner Miquel Esquius who is retiring, thus becoming the first woman to hold the highest position of responsibility in the Catalan police.
Commissioner Ferran López (59 years old), who already replaced Josep Lluis Trapero as head of the Mossos d’Esquadra during the 155 period (2017-18), will replace him again but this time as the general director of the force following the resignation of the major.
Josep Lluís Trapero resigned this Tuesday as general director of the Police of Catalonia after two years in office. The major of the Mossos d’Esquadra steps aside in his role as the political head of the police after two complex years, marked by the fight against repeat offenders, the introduction of video surveillance cameras, the crackdown on knives in the streets, and some controversies such as those arising from Mossos infiltrated in teachers’ assemblies and the initiative to introduce police officers in schools. Trapero was Salvador Illa’s star signing and his name was already announced during the PSC electoral campaign.
Day 40 after the massive entry into Ceuta: there are still more immigrants on the street than hosted – and protected – in centers set up by the Government. The humanitarian crisis deepens with hundreds of people still sleeping outdoors in any corner, waiting for a place in a temporary facility. The people of Ceuta are not wrong when they take to the streets to denounce that their city has become a Temporary Stay Center for Immigrants (CETI). A tour of the little more than seven km2 where a population of 84,000 inhabitants is concentrated is enough to see that Ceuta is the city of 1,001 CETIs. There is only one official one, overwhelmed but with a roof, but any spot serves to improvise a shelter to avoid the cold of the early mornings or the heat of the endless days. All share unhealthy conditions.
“Your country will make you pay. Set a date and we’ll see each other at the polls,” Alberto Núñez Feijóo urged Pedro Sánchez. “Of course there will be elections in 2027. We will see each other at the polls and we will beat them again,” the Prime Minister replied to the opposition leader. Both have thus agreed to settle their political clash in the next general elections, amid confrontation over the Ceuta migration crisis, while the ERC spokesperson, Gabriel Rufián, has urged the head of the Executive to react if he intends to renew his mandate after the next elections. “The numbers don’t add up for me,” he warned. On the contrary, he warned that the Popular Party and the far-right Vox could add up to an overwhelming absolute majority of up to 210 deputies, according to some polls, in the next legislature.
They had promised us, just yesterday, that there would be a police presence in front of the school. See: not a trace.” Fátima Embarek is the president of the parents’ association of the Ramón y Cajal school, which some people from Ceuta still know by its old name Convoy de la Victoria. Not a single officer or soldier at half past eight in the morning – the appointment is at nine – except Hebil Tarek, eleven years old, and his father Mohamed. “He is so eager to start that we are already here”
“We have nothing to hide and we act with transparency,” warned the Government spokesperson, Elma Saiz, yesterday after the Council of Ministers approved the declassification of “all” the reports in its possession, including internal communications between different government departments, prepared from July 1 to August 1, regarding the massive influx of immigrants that occurred in Ceuta on July 30 and 31.
The presiding judge of the instruction court number 41 of Madrid, Juan Carlos Peinado, held this Tuesday afternoon the preliminary hearing with the parties of the case of Begoña Gómez, the wife of the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez. This is the step prior to the order to open the oral trial that will seat the accused on the bench for the crimes of influence peddling and embezzlement, and her assistant, Cristina Álvarez, who is only charged with the second crime.