Congress has approved the creation of three commissions of inquiry that are part of the PSOE’s negotiation with ERC and Junts in exchange for their support for . On the same day that the Lower House has accepted the proposed organic amnesty law for processing, the 178 deputies that make up the investiture bloc have approved the launch of three parliamentary commissions to investigate the ‘Operation Catalonia’he use of Pegasus software to spy on different political leaders and the attacks of 17-A in Barcelona and Cambrils.
After a marathon debate that ended well into the night, PSOE, Sumar, ERC, Junts, EH Bildu, PNV, Podemos and BNG have voted in favor of promoting the three commissions, with the rejection of PP, Vox, Canary Coalition and UPN . The PP deputy Carlos Rojas He has regretted that commissions “continue to be invented” to “stain” the name of the PP and has reproached the PSOE for its “indecent” and “shameful” agreement with the independentists. Furthermore, he has criticized the “denigration of justice” with the alleged investigations into lawfare. For his part, the Vox parliamentarian Ignacio Gíl Lázaro has denounced that neither ERC nor Junst have “any moral legitimacy” to propose these investigations.
Corruption
The first of the investigative commissions is on the so-called ‘operation Catalonia’, a branch of the well-known ‘operation Kitchen’, according to which during Mariano Rajoy’s mandate illegal use was made of the reserved resources of the Ministry of the Interior to investigate and spy on Catalan politicians. Specifically, sending members of the police to Andorra to obtain information on the bank accounts of Catalan leaders in the Principality.
Among the objectives of this commission, Junts included “investigating all those initiatives that could have been carried out since the state institutions with the aim of persecuting political dissidence.” Although this definition is very broad, within it is ‘lawfare’, that term that was also included in the agreement between the PSOE and the post-convergents.
Espionage
In the commission on the ‘Catalonia operation’, Junts also incorporated the request to investigate the ‘software’ purchase contracts. Pegasus or others “allegedly used to spy on part of the official establishments.” However, there will be a specific investigation commission for this matter, registered by ERC, EH Bildu and the BNG. Specifically, they intend to purge responsibilities for “espionage and interference with privacy and intimacy, through the Pegasus and Candiru malware, of political leaders, activists, lawyers, journalists, institutions and their families and associates.”
The explanatory statement includes information indicating that in recent years, which also affects the governments of Pedro Sánchez, the president of the Generalitat has been spied on, Pere Aragonès, and his predecessors Quim Torra, Carles Puigdemont and Artur Mas; to the former presidents of the Parliament Roger Torrent and Laura Borràs; to leaders of political parties such as Arnaldo Otegi (Bildu), Marta Rovira (ERC), Jordi Sánchez (Junts) or Anna Gabriel (CUP); and lawyers such as Andreu Van den Eynde or Gonzalo Boye, among other independence activists.
Terrorism
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The last of the commissions, presented by Junts and the BNG, is about the attacks of August 17, 2017 that took place on the Rambla de Barcelona and in Cambrils. The post-convergents demand the right to know “the truth and the implications derived from the attacks”, “clarify who were the alleged political or other responsible parties in the attacks” and “propose measures of restitution and compensation to all affected people” .
These objectives are less specific than those they promulgated in August, when they indicated that they wanted to investigate “the connection of the National Intelligence Center with Imam Es-Satty” and whether “the State apparatus had information about the attack.”