Alvaro Carvajal Madrid
Madrid
Updated Tuesday, March 12, 2024-13:22
Justice The CGPJ unanimously urges Congress and Senate to "refrain" from summoning judges to lawfare commissions
Congreso Junts insults the judges due to the passivity of the PSOE, which approves creating the 'lawfare' commissions in Congress
ERC has taken advantage of the door opened by the PSOE in Congress and has requested the summons of judges, prosecutors, the last directors of the CNI, the hard core of Mariano Rajoy's Government and all the leaders of the PP in one of the three investigative commissions. which will analyze whether there has been "
lawfare
" against the Catalan independence movement, that is, whether the institutions used the judicial dirty war against them to stop the
process
.
Specifically, he has presented this request for appearances before the commission "on the so-called
'operation Catalonia'
and the actions of the Ministry of the Interior during the Popular Party governments in relation to the alleged irregularities that link senior police officials and commanders with the existence of a parapolice plot".
The creation of this commission, along with two others on the use of
Pegasus
in the context of separatism or on "the right to know the truth" about the
attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils
, were part of the toll that Junts and ERC charged for their votes. to the investiture of Pedro Sánchez.
For the first of them, ERC has asked to question 62 people, among whom
Manuel García-Castellón
, judge of the National Court, stands out from the judicial world;
Hermenegildo Alfredo Barrera
, judge of court number 13 of Madrid;
the president of the National Court, José
Ramón Navarro
;
Javier Zaragoza
, prosecutor of the Supreme Court Chamber;
and
Martín Rodríguez Sol
, former chief prosecutor of Catalonia.
This list represents a challenge to the Judiciary, since since the end of 2023 the
General Council of the Judiciary
(CGPJ) unanimously ruled against judges being summoned to these "
lawfare
" commissions to be questioned by politicians about their actions.
Whether these people, like many others, are finally summoned by the commission will depend on the PSOE, which is the one who with its votes can tip the balance towards one side or the other.
For now, what ERC is doing now is putting forward its own list and gathering support from now on to get others to endorse the summons of as many of them as possible.
The Minister of the Presidency and Justice,
Félix Bolaños
, has indicated that the groups "may request the appearances they want", but that the PSOE "will comply with the law and prevent judges and magistrates from appearing to testify on matters about which they have had knowledge in the exercise of their duties," reports
Marta Belver
.
In addition to judges and prosecutors, the list of Republicans claims the senior staff of
Mariano Rajoy
's Government , starting with the then president and his
number two
,
Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría
.
With them there are other ministers:
Jorge Fernández Díaz, Cristóbal Montoro, Luis de Guindos, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, Rafael Catalá, José Ignacio Zoido or María Dolores de Cospedal
, who was also general secretary of the PP.
To them we must add Rajoy's Chief of Staff,
Jorge Moragas
.
ERC also wants to rope in the rest of the PP leaders to make them appear in Congress: the current one,
Alberto Núñez Feijóo
, and the previous ones,
José María Aznar and Pablo Casado
.
Among the numerous proposed appearances are also the former directors of the CNI
Paz Esteban
, who was relieved last term by the Government after pressure from ERC and Junts for espionage with judicial authorization with the Pegasus program on figures of the Catalan independence movement, and
Félix Sanz Roldán
, his predecessor in Intelligence.
On the other hand, many of those mentioned are already old acquaintances in the investigative commissions of Congress: the retired Police Commissioner
José Manuel Villarejo
and the police leadership during the PP years, with names such as
Eugenio Pino, José Ángel Fuentes Gago or Enrique García Castaño
and Interior officials such as
Francisco Martínez or José Antonio Nieto
.
The current Minister of the Interior,
Fernando Grande-Marlaska
, or the former president of the Barcelona Football Club
Sandro Rosell
also appears .