The Minister of Culture and spokesperson for Sumar, Ernest Urtasun, has asked his socialist partners in the Government to provide more explanations about the new National Court investigation into corruption against the PSOE. “The new information is serious, and I do believe that the Socialist Party must be aware that it needs to give more explanations. The explanations given yesterday were absolutely insufficient,” Urtasun said in an interview on TVE. The Central Operative Unit (UCO), the elite corps of the Civil Guard, spent 12 hours yesterday at the PSOE headquarters in Madrid searching for documentation about an alleged espionage team set up by the party’s former Organization Secretary Santos Cerdán. Meanwhile, the PP insists that they do not have the numbers for a vote of no confidence and calls for an early election. “I believe Mr. Sánchez is terribly afraid of the polls,” said the popular spokesperson Borja Sémper on Telecinco.
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The ‘Leire case’
22 meetings in Ferraz, payments to Leire Díez and bribery attempts: Cerdán drags PSOE into a new corruption case
The PSOE had not yet recovered its spirits after the indictment a week ago of former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, when agents from the Central Operative Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard entered this Wednesday its historic national headquarters on Ferraz Street in Madrid. The agents arrived at the socialists’ headquarters under the command of Santiago Pedraz, investigating magistrate of the National Court, who is investigating an alleged corruption scheme devised to “systematically and continuously destabilize any judicial procedure or police action that could directly or indirectly impact the interests of the PSOE or the Government.” The judge ordered the armed institute to request documentation from the party — or take it by force if they did not cooperate — about the alleged implicated, including former member Leire Díez; Santos Cerdán, former Organization Secretary; Gaspar Zarrías, former vice president of the Andalusian Government; and businessman Javier Pérez Dolset.
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The PP insists on an early election: “I believe Mr. Sánchez is terribly afraid of the polls”
The PP spokesperson, Borja Sémper, insisted on Telecinco that the PP does not have the support in Congress to present a vote of no confidence. “What the groups supporting the Government say is that they are not willing, so there is not a sufficient majority today to pass a hypothetical vote of no confidence,” he said.
Sémper insisted on calling for elections: “What we demand is that the President of the Government dissolve the Cortes and give the word to the Spanish people. He does not have a political majority to govern. There is no parliamentary majority, Spain is paralyzed.” “I believe Mr. Sánchez is terribly afraid of the polls and enormously terrified of what the Spanish people think,” said the PP spokesperson, who said that “despite all the garbage we are seeing, there is a better future” and that his party wants to “make it evident” with an electoral call. “That is why we want the Spanish people to speak and open a new political time in Spain. We are not condemned to live in this daily and continuous alarm. This is a daily and permanent scandal. This is unbearable,” he concluded.
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Regarding the entry of the Central Operative Unit of the Civil Guard into the PSOE headquarters in Madrid, Sémper indicated that this is the “Watergate of the Socialist Party.” “Today we are seeing the Watergate of the Socialist Party, how a structure is created and financed, supposedly, according to the judge, with false invoices that structure to persecute the Civil Guard, politicians, judges, and journalists who investigate power. This is what we are seeing and what we are seeing in real time and what we were told very recently was a lie and did not happen,” he described.
Sumar asks PSOE to “react” and considers the explanations given “absolutely insufficient”
The Minister of Culture and spokesperson for Sumar, Ernest Urtasun, has asked his socialist partners in the Government to provide more explanations about the new National Court investigation into corruption against the PSOE. “The new information is serious, and I do believe that the Socialist Party must be aware that it needs to give more explanations. The explanations given yesterday were absolutely insufficient,” Urtasun said in an interview on TVE.
On the other hand, the minister warned that there is an operation to “bring down” the Government and that a right-wing Government will not solve “anything.” “Obviously, there is a general operation to bring down the Government. Also, we are all aware that the solution to everything that is happening cannot be that those from Gürtel in coalition with the far right hurt the Government, which we know will not solve anything,” he added.
Good morning. The developments in the Leire Díez case, with new indictments of former PSOE officials and its current manager, which have emerged after the investigation of former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, add ammunition to the opposition to demand early elections. The PP rules out the vote of no confidence because the Government’s partners would not support it.
