The Board of Spokespersons of the Parliament rejected this Tuesday that the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, appear in the plenary session this same week to provide explanations about the causes affecting the PSOE, according to parliamentary sources.
Junts, the PP and Vox had requested the appearance of the Catalan president, but PSC, ERC and Comuns voted against modifying the agenda of the plenary session starting this Tuesday to introduce this point. The full debate on the Catalan budgets, agreed upon by socialists, republicans and the commons, is scheduled for this same week and will take place on Thursday in the Parliament. Despite voting against the appearance being this week, ERC announced this Monday that it joined the requests for Illa’s appearance in the Parliament.
Regarding the republican position, the spokesperson of Junts in the Parliament, Salvador Vergés, considered it “incomprehensible.” “We do not understand it. Who has seen them and who sees them. Yesterday, Elisenda Alamany asked for Illa to appear over these alleged corruption cases, and when we ask for this to be voted on tomorrow in the Parliament, they vote no,” he lamented this Tuesday at a press conference in the Catalan Chamber.
For Vergés, the cases under investigation affect Catalonia directly or indirectly, so he criticized that “the investiture tripartite, and especially ERC” opposed the request for appearance. The spokesperson based the request on three issues that, in his opinion, require explanations from the president: an alleged 3% commission that Zapatero would have tried to agree upon in relation to the Hard Rock project, the judicial request for documentation about the PSC’s electoral campaign in the 2024 Catalan elections, and the alleged links of the former president with Huawei, a company with which the Generalitat has signed a contract valued at 127 million euros, despite the rulings indicating business relations with a UTE and not with the Chinese multinational.
The ERC spokesperson in the Parliament, Esther Capella, defended the rejection arguing that explanations must be demanded “where appropriate,” referring to the Congress of Deputies and the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez. Capella stated that the independence movement was already the subject in the past of investigations and accusations based on “narratives” and “tailored reports” to charge crimes that, according to her, had not been committed. The republican leader assured that ERC will be the first party to demand responsibilities “if conclusive evidence” of irregularities appears, but rejected transferring “the debates of the Spanish State” to the Parliament. The republicans will indeed question Illa on the matter in the control session of the president in the Parliament this Wednesday.
The other investiture partner of the PSC, Comuns, has asked “not to play into the hands of the right,” considering the accusations of Junts about the Huawei issue to lack consistency to block Illa’s appearance.
