Last Thursday, in its last plenary session, several counselors of the Court of Accounts asked its president, María José de la Fuente, about the renewal of the supervisory body, whose nine-year term ends on July 23.
And the president acknowledged that "he did not know anything," according to court sources.
De la Fuente sent a letter in April to the president of Congress, Meritxell Batet, requesting the relief of the 12 court advisers in a timely manner, but did not receive a response.
Batet posed the dilemma to the groups, to no avail.
The PP refuses to negotiate that renewal now, after the granting of pardons to the separatist leaders and on the eve of knowing the sanction of 5.4 million euros that the court will impose on 40 former high-ranking officials of the Generalitat.
The popular refuse to negotiate with the Government and the PSOE because, as happens in the General Council of the Judiciary, they also have an absolute majority in that body (7 of the 12 councilors were proposed by the PP) and they do not want to lose it.
The dispute between the Government and the PP over the pardons of nine Catalan independence leaders is played out on all fronts.
And this week it is the turn of the Court of Accounts, the supervisory body of public institutions.
The court must resolve this Tuesday the file opened for the accounting responsibility of the positions of the Catalan Government between 2011 and 2017 when improperly using public funds for the external promotion of the independence process. The report covers the management of the public body Diplocat and several ministries, and affects almost 40 former high-ranking officials of the Generalitat, from former presidents Artur Mas and Carles Puigdemont, to former vice-president Oriol Junqueras and former councilors Andreu Mas-Colell or Raül Romeva, among others.
The 500-page sanctioning file that will be discussed on Tuesday in the Court of Auditors points out that more than 5.4 million euros could be used in this task of seeking international support for the independence project. That same day, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will receive in La Moncloa in a bilateral interview the new president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, to resume an institutional and political relationship lost in the last 10 years of drift from the independence process.
The central coalition government thus faces a critical moment in the legislature, after a difficult week due to the granting of pardons to the Catalan separatist leaders. President Sánchez has multiplied his presence these days to explain what he has called "the reunion agenda", with constant appeals to "forgiveness", "harmony and coexistence" to justify these measures of grace based on public utility.
The pardons were approved last Tuesday by the Council of Ministers, despite reports against the Supreme Court itself, which was the one that issued the convictions, and the Prosecutor's Office. Despite these pitfalls, the Executive debated for hours its proposal for a more political than legal solution to the Catalan conflict. In this strategy now intersects the approval of the sanctioning file of the Court of Accounts against former high-ranking officials of the Generalitat.
On Wednesday, in Congress, ERC spokespersons, Gabriel Rufián, and Junts, Míriam Nogueras, demanded from the Government "more steps forward" and "courage" in the process to ease the Catalan crisis and pointed directly against the decisions of the Court of counts.
Rufián came to disqualify the court for its composition, which he attributes to certain conservative family sagas (Manuel Aznar, brother of the former president of the Government, is among the councilors of the PP), and demanded a renewal in his election system.
The president of the Court of Accounts, María José de la Fuente, in an appearance in May.JJ Guillén / EFE
ERC sources later indicated that these proposals had already been “sent to the PSOE” and that that party had taken note of it.
But they clarified that their ideas are only "proposals" and "not pressures."
On Friday, the Minister of Transport and Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, José Luis Ábalos, spoke about these complaints in an interview on Cadena SER in Catalonia: “These causes are still stones on this path, but we knew they were there . It is up to us to uncover this path within the law. It is the only way. Of course, it is more difficult to retrace what has been wrong ”.
On Friday, the Catalan president, Pere Aragonès, replied to the minister's thesis and ordered him to uncover the potholes on that road to reunion. “The Court of Accounts has become the new inquisition, the economic inquisition. Faced with this situation of injustice, we have to use the mechanisms that we all have at our disposal to avoid the situation. Each party knows what is in its power to reverse the repression. We encourage you to do so, ”said Aragonès.
In this context of a game of tensions, the last plenary session of the Court of Auditors was held last Thursday.
Several councilors then questioned the president about her situation and about the imminent renewal of the 12 councilors nominated by the political parties (six in Congress and six in the Senate), as provided for in the Constitution.
De la Fuente had to admit that he had not obtained any response from the president of Congress, to whom he wrote on March 22.
The councilors then chose to meet again for the next plenary session, on Thursday, July 29, with their mandate extended.
The request of the Court of Accounts to Congress about its next renewal was addressed by the Board of the Chamber on April 6.
Batet forwarded that request to the different groups and did not pick up any solutions.
At that time, it also happened that the PSOE and the PP broke up their negotiations that had been underway for months for the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary and other constitutional bodies, also pending for more than two and a half years. The only contacts that are still underway, and that despite the multiple difficulties could be closed this Monday, are to complete the new management structure of RTVE, but in this case the conversations that are still in force from the top of the PP are with the new president of the Public body.
From the parliamentary leadership of the PP it is confirmed that all these negotiations have not been reactivated after the Madrid elections of 4-M and that, in addition, they are now considered even more unfeasible after the granting of pardons.
The PP refuses, in that sense, to open now any door to discuss both the Judicial Power and the Court of Accounts itself.
The blockade that they maintain in key institutional bodies is now argued with a phrase: "The Executive of Pedro Sánchez has shown that it is not to be trusted."
The political cast
Sources from the Court of Auditors also state that the PP is not interested in discussing a change in the composition of the 12 councilors of political origin of that body for years, because it has enjoyed a wide and comfortable absolute majority for years. . The 12 current political councilors were decided in 2012 with a distribution that then clearly favored the popular ones: seven councilors were appointed by the PP and five by the PSOE. The socialist sector, in addition, lost in 2018 one of its advisers promoted from the Senate, Lluis Armet, who resigned and to this day has not yet been replaced, so now they only maintain four advisers from their ideological sphere.
In the PSOE they understand, as happens in the General Council of the Judiciary, that this distribution is out of date and that it no longer corresponds to what was ratified by the Spanish at the polls in the November 2019 elections and from which the current Government emanated of a socialist coalition with United We Can. Socialist sources thus point out that the composition of the new councilors of the court should be just the opposite, that is, with seven appointed from the progressive Executive (with contributions for the first time from Podemos and also possibly from nationalist parties) and five for the conservatives. That transaction will not be easy.
The leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, and several members of his team have accused the Government of Sánchez of giving in to these independence claims on the Court of Accounts and of promoting "attacks on State institutions."
The popular will demand explanations from Minister Ábalos of his words in Congress.
24 years in a row of popular presidents
Article 136 of the Constitution defines the Court of Accounts as "the supreme body overseeing the accounts and economic management of the State, as well as the public sector." And it specifies that it depends "directly on the Cortes Generales and will exercise its functions by delegation of them in the examination and verification of the General State Account."
The Basic Law specifies that the members of the Court of Accounts enjoy “the same independence and immobility and will be subject to the same incompatibilities as the judges”, and indicates that their composition, organization and functions are regulated through an organic law, by Therefore, it is not easy to modify without large majorities, as the nationalist spokesmen of ERC and Junts have complained precisely last week in Congress.
The reality of this supervisory body is that its president, its governing committee and its advisers decide on a political division, as is the case with other constitutional bodies. In this case with terms of nine years, and requiring a three-fifths majority of the Courts. That is, impossible to change at this time without the agreement of the PSOE and the PP.
The current Court of Auditors officially fulfills its mandate of nine years on July 23, so in the absence of an agreement it will have to continue to be extended, which has already happened more times.
Since its creation in 1982, the Court of Auditors has had eight presidents. The first three were chosen at the proposal of the PSOE and the following, since 1994, have been nominated by the PP. The popular, therefore, have been proposing the president of this institution for 24 years, although he has not been governing that entire period, but only 15 years since that date. The first president from the PP was Milagros Crespo, in 1994, after the dismissal of Adolfo Carretero due to a serious illness that caused his death.
The eight presidents of the Court of Accounts have been José María Fernández Pirla (1982-1988), Pascual Sala (1988-1990), Adolfo Carretero (1990-1994), Milagros Crespo (1994-1997), Ubaldo Nieto (1997-2007) , Manuel Núñez Pérez (2007-2012), Ramón Álvarez de Miranda (2012-2018) and now María José de la Fuente (2018-2021). Nieto, who is the one who held the position the longest, appears in Bárcenas' papers as a donor of 3,000 euros.