The controversial retired police commissioner José Manuel Villarejo will be in charge of inaugurating the third parliamentary investigation commission on the Kitchen case, the
sewers
policies and police allegedly sponsored by the Ministry of the Interior against political adversaries of the PP during the government of Mariano Rajoy.
This new investigation in Congress, which seemed doomed to failure, will finally start on May 10, two days after the start of the campaign for the municipal and regional elections of 28-M (although it will immediately suspend its sessions until after the elections). ).
But it will do it decaffeinated: the parties have only agreed on a minimum list for appearances, the one proposed by the PNV, and will therefore only cite Villarejo and the president of the Andorran Bank, Higini Cierco i Noguer.
The commission met again this Tuesday in a very pre-electoral climate and with differences that appeared insurmountable between the various parties.
The PSOE proposed a list of 23 appearing parties, mainly with police charges and commanders from that time, but in which Rajoy did not appear.
The Socialists have defended to the end that for this initial phase of the commission the essential thing was to know which senior officials gave the orders to investigate —even fabricating false reports— political rivals of the PP.
And they focused their requests there, also very marked by the time limit of this session, which ends in June and has an electoral campaign in the middle in which the commission will not work.
Unidas Podemos, with the support of other regular members of the PSOE in Parliament such as ERC, EH Bildu, and also on this occasion from Junts and the CUP, argued that one cannot inquire about these supposed sewers of the State without taking into account the implications from some media representatives who echoed those false reports.
ERC, in any case, as its spokesman, Gabriel Rufián, specified, advised the other parties of the progressive investiture bloc, as a lesser evil, to let the work of the commission begin to try later, depending on the evolution of the revelations of the initial appearances. , ask for new ones.
That possibilist position of ERC, which had demanded up to 55 appearances from the start, did not sink in Unidas Podemos.
In his list of appearances United We Can included former President Rajoy and also the former leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, but he placed special emphasis on journalists or media editors such as Antonio García Ferreras (La Sexta), Ana Terradillos (Cuatro) passing through Congress. , Eduardo Inda (
OkDiario
), Esteban Urreiztieta and Fernando Lázaro (
El Mundo
), Ana Pardo de Vera (
Público
) and Mauricio Casals (Atresmedia Group).
The PSOE never saw fit to turn the commission into a television set and a pilgrimage for journalists, for fear of transforming the sessions into a media spectacle.
The socialists offered UP to quote the former director of
El Mundo
David Jiménez, very critical of the operation of these so-called State sewers, but Podemos demanded that all the other representatives of the media be present.
Finally, the PSOE has voted this Tuesday —like the PP, Vox and Ciudadanos— against the appearances requested by United We Can;
and UP voted with the PP, Vox and Cs against the proposals of the socialists, which focused on calling police charges.
The situation, after several weeks stuck, was heading towards a new blockade and an extension without a fixed term until a minimum agreement was reached: backing the PNV list, which only requested two appearances: that of Commissioner Villarejo and that of the president of the Andorran Bank, Higini Cierco i Noguer.
In the end, this solution was supported by all the groups except the parliamentary right.
The PNV and the Catalan separatist parties are interested in investigating the details revealed in recent months following the publication of Villarejo's secret recordings, but they also want to delve into the alleged blackmail that the patriotic PP police exerted on those
responsible
for the now extinct Banca Privada de Andorra (BPA) to provide bank details on pro-independence leaders.
That derivative, on which there is a judicial investigation underway, splashes former president Rajoy and former ministers Jorge Fernández Díaz and Cristóbal Montoro.
This Solomonic solution to get the investigative commission up and running did not please, in any case, neither the PSOE nor Unidas Podemos, who reproached each other for their inflexible stances.
Next week the deputies assigned to that commission will meet again to discuss the possibility of agreeing in the future, after the 28-M elections, new appearances.