The PSOE has finally accepted, after multiple pressure on the Government both from some of its main partners in Parliament and from opposition parties, that the controversial retired commissioner José Manuel Villarejo appear before the Kitchen investigation commission, on the use irregular media from the interior ministries of the governments of Mariano Rajoy to cover up cases of corruption of the PP.
The PSOE has waited until the committee meeting this Thursday, after the plenary session, to correct its starting position and assume the argument that Villarejo's presence can be controversial and noisy, but also key to clarifying how that operation was mounted. He came to promote espionage from the Interior to the former national treasurer of the PP, Luis Bárcenas.
The solution was found in that the parties voted on the PNV's approach to summon Villarejo and Commissioner García Castaño.
The list raised by the PSOE with other appearing parties also went ahead.
The PNV's proposal for appearances was very brief and simple, to begin with.
The Basque nationalists only wanted Villarejo to go to the commission on the one hand, as the great centerpiece of the networks of the State police sewers, and the commissioner Enrique García Castaño, known as
El Gordo,
another of the elements usual of that plot.
García Castaño stated in his last statement before Judge Manuel García-Castellón for the
Kitchen case
, on December 14, that the Interior leadership of the Government of Mariano Rajoy was informed about “other” clandestine operations beyond spying on Luis Bárcenas .
The parties had until this Wednesday to present their proposals for appearing to the sessions of the Kitchen commission.
The PSOE registered his and Villarejo was not there.
The PSOE did believe it appropriate for the former president of the PP Executive to go to the commission in those years, between 2013 and 2016, Mariano Rajoy, but not many more politicians for now than those who were in charge of the Ministry of the Interior, such as the minister himself , Jorge Fernández Díaz;
the former Secretaries of State for Security Francisco Martínez and José Antonio Nieto, and the former Director General of the Police Ignacio Cosidó.
The Socialists also proposed calling Dolores de Cospedal, former secretary general of the PP at the time, and her husband, Ignacio López del Hierro, but especially commissioners and police officers who allegedly participated in the illegal espionage operation on Bárcenas to find out who they were receiving from. the orders.
The PSOE understood that summoning Villarejo and granting him the media and political platform of a meeting in Congress in front of the main spokesmen of all the parties could be too risky a gift.
And they argued that the retired commissioner could take advantage of it to lie, intoxicate and cause noise plus provide clarifications.
Some permanent or habitual allied parties of the PSOE, such as Unidas Podemos, but also ERC, conceded that this risk of overexposure is more than possible with Villarejo but reasoned that it can also be provoked with the appearances of former minister Jorge Fernández or his former number two and now main enemy in this case, Francisco Martínez.
And, in addition, they maintained to try to convince the Socialists that Villarejo's role in this case and in several related to the so-called State sewers made him absolutely essential to grant some credit to the work of the commission.
Leaders such as Gabriel Rufián, the spokesperson for ERC, and others from United We Can, from anonymity, confessed during this Thursday in Congress that they were working privately and with various bands with the Government and the PSOE to assume their reasons.
And although the lists of appearing parties were already registered and closed, they debated solutions to reach a consensus on some type of amendment during the working session of the commission in which it was accepted to call Villarejo.
Vox, for its part, also considered that the presence of the commissioner in his work in the commission was "key and nuclear" and announced in the morning, before the session, that if Villarejo was finally vetoed, by the PSOE with what they conclude that the complicity of United We Can, would carry out an initiative negotiated with the defense attorney of the commissioner to interrogate him in the Estremera prison (Madrid) where he has been imprisoned since November 2017 and that they would record that talk and provide it in full to the deputies .
In an interview with EL PAÍS, already in prison, Villarejo responded like this when asked by whom Operation Kitchen ordered him: “They tell me from Mrs. Cospedal to the minister, the secretary of state ... The only one with whom I do not speak personally with Rajoy, but I do speak through intermediaries ”.
Podemos, like the PSOE, also wants to listen to Rajoy, the former treasurer Bárcenas, his wife, Rosalía Iglesias, and the other Interior officials, but also his former vice president, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría - as Vox has requested -, and to the general and former director of the CNI Félix Sanz Roldán.
The formation led by Pablo Iglesias included in its last point on its list the request to call the director of
OK Diario,
Eduardo Inda, a proposal that the PSOE has not endorsed, which has not wanted to include other media representatives that They have investigated about that operation.
The PP, which is the party that governed and commanded the Interior during the assembly of Operation Kitchen, now feels freed from ties with that past, because its political protagonists are no longer in the front row, and it put Villarejo on its list , in prison since November 2017. But he did not introduce any of the exalted popular positions of that time because he understands that they already assumed political responsibilities by losing in the last elections or were removed from their electoral lists.
What the PP did do was draw up a list with leaders of the PSOE and United We Can to counteract what they understand to be an attempt by the current Executive to supervise its formation, which is now in the opposition.
The PP would like them to go through the Kitchen commission, thus, the second vice president and leader of United We Can, Pablo Iglesias;
the leader of that party and third vice president of Congress, Gloria Elizo;
various current and former Socialist ministers - such as Fernando Grande Marlaska (Interior), Margarita Robles (Defense), Juan Alberto Belloch (Interior and Justice) or Mariano Fernández Bermejo (Justice) - but also the State Attorney General, Dolores Delgado (former minister of Justice), the former magistrate of the National High Court Baltasar Garzón, and even a former police chief appointed by the PSOE who investigated the 11-M attacks.
The popular also requested the presence of Marta Flor Núñez and José Luis Calvente, former lawyers of Podemos related to the judicial investigation of the case of the theft of the cell phone of former Iglesias advisor Dina Bousselham.
None of that has been taken into account.