Política

“I will answer everything I am asked.” Although the president of the court judging Operation Kitchen warned her that she had been provisionally cleared, meaning any false answer could serve to reopen the case against her, the former secretary general of the Popular Party arrived this Thursday at the Audiencia Nacional eager to distance herself from any parapolice operation to steal information from Luis Bárcenas because at that time she “was certain” that “that person you are talking about” (referring to the former treasurer) did not have any document that could compromise the Popular Party leadership over its irregular financing. Words that could contradict a recording that was made public in which she asked former commissioner José Manuel Villarejo:

As expected, Mariano Rajoy has denied the main accusations made by former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas about his knowledge of an illegal slush fund within the party or about a supposed operation orchestrated by the Popular Party, the Government, or the Police to steal data that could criminally affect him. In fact, for the former president of the government, there was no illegal operation.

There will be an investiture of Jorge Azcón. As La Vanguardia has been able to confirm, PP and Vox have reached an agreement for the investiture of the popular candidate, who won the elections on February 8 and obtained 26 of the 67 deputies distributed in the Cortes de Aragón. In this sense, he needs the 14 Vox deputies to reach an absolute majority.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office has appealed the indictment of Begoña Gómez, wife of the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, agreed by Judge Juan Carlos Peinado. The investigating judge brought her, her advisor Cristina Álvarez, and businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés to the brink of the defendant’s bench, for the crimes of influence peddling, corruption in private sector business, misappropriation, and embezzlement of public funds.

The Prison Surveillance Judge José Luis Castro has rejected the application of the semi-freedom regime to former ETA members Soledad Iparraguirre “Anboto” and Juan Ramón Carasatorre, which means their return to prison.

María Guardiola was sworn in this Wednesday as president of the Junta de Extremadura after the agreement with Vox with 61 measures. In total, Guardiola has obtained the support of 40 of the 65 deputies of the Extremadura Assembly: that is, the votes of the PP (29) and Vox (11).

The reunion of Pedro Sánchez with Alberto Núñez Feijóo, this Wednesday in the control session in Congress, has resulted in a tense struggle between the two to once again set the framework for the political debate. The leader of the Popular Party has thrown in his face both the corruption scandals affecting the Executive and the problems in public services due to the railway crisis after the Adamuz accident: “The only thing that matches your corruption is your incompetence,” he reproached him. And the President of the Government, in turn, reproached him for the pact sealed by the PP and Vox in Extremadura, which in his opinion “kicks the Constitution, violating the principle of equality among citizens and the principle of non-discrimination,” in the face of the “national priority” defended by the far-right.

The PP’s vote against has led to the defeat of the motion promoted by Vox in Congress, but the ultra-party won the battle it sought by imposing the concept of “national priority” in the parliamentary debate to drag the PP into pronouncing on it. The term, included in the government agreement with the popular party in Extremadura, has reopened discrepancies between both parties in the midst of the negotiation process for regional governments in Aragon, where an agreement seems imminent, and Castilla y León.

The former CEO of Globalia, owner of Air Europa, Francisco Javier Hidalgo, not only defended the legality of the airline’s rescue during the pandemic but also harshly criticized the conditions under which the Government finally agreed to the loan, which he described as the worst in the history of the entire world.

Former Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz has witnessed from the front row of the dock at the Audiencia Nacional how the main evidence against him for his alleged involvement in Operation Kitchen has finally vanished. The smoking gun that dragged him here are some messages supposedly sent to him by his former number two, Francisco Martínez, in which he told him that the operation to steal information from the former treasurer of the Popular Party, Luis Bárcenas, had been carried out “successfully,” with “all” of it being dumped. This Tuesday, a second notary —just like the first one did— has ratified that it is impossible to certify that the phone number Martínez had attributed on his mobile to the contact saved as Fernández Díaz actually belonged to the former Interior Minister.