February 6, 2014. A group of people try to swim from Morocco to Ceuta. Civilian guards fire rubber bullets to prevent them from touching Spanish soil. 14 migrants drowned. Some bodies are piling up on beaches on this side of the border. Mariano Rajoy was in power at the time and his interior minister, Jorge Fernandez Diaz, was targeted by the opposition for his lies and cover-ups. The PSOE demanded his appearance, but not his resignation. Nor did he support his censure in Congress. But he used the Tarajal tragedy as political ammunition against the PP and targeted, for example, the director of the Civil Guard, Arsenio Fernández de Mesa.
Eight years later, the roles were reversed. At least 24 people died last June in an attempt to jump the fence separating Morocco and Melilla. Immediately there were doubts about where the events took place, on which side of the border. Just as in 2014 journalistic investigations such as elDiario.es revealed the lies of the government, the media, including the BBC, published images that cast doubt on the version offered by the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande Marlasca. Extension, President.
Pedro Sánchez said in June that the crisis had been “handled well”. A phrase that could go against him if it is proven that some of the deaths took place on Spanish soil, as testified by some MPs who saw pictures of what happened in Melilla.
And PP was waiting for their return. Even more viral. From the beginning, the party, led by Alberto Núñez Feijoo, used the tragedy of Melilla politically and directly linked it, for example, to the open diplomatic crisis with Morocco and the change of Spain’s position to the west of the Sahara. Pegasus espionage against members of the executive branch or problems with diplomatic and commercial relations with Algeria.
The PP president went so far as to question whether the coalition government is protecting the Spanishness of Ceuta and Melilla, and traveled to Europe to say he understood “the embarrassment of my country’s internal division and external weakness”.
But PP spent months covering the tragedy. Before. The publication of some of the images by the BBC has caused a breakdown in the internal unity of the coalition government, with the PSOE trying to look away and United We Can calling for a thorough investigation. Parliamentary partners also increased the pressure on Marlaska.
There, they joined the right-wing party, which had one of its main enemies in the Minister of Internal Affairs since the beginning of the legislative body. The PP has called for the resignation of the interior minister every day of the week, something the PSOE has never done with Fernandez Dia over the deaths in Ceuta. They made the Secretary General, Kuka Gamara; “Number Three”, Elias Bendodo; Or Deputy Ana Vazquez, who is in charge of internal affairs for the Feijo Executive.
Bendodo even blurted out that he himself had seen pictures showing that there were dead people on the Spanish border and that they had been brought back on the other side of the fence. “If the bodies were transported from Spain to Morocco, as we were able to verify in the pictures and that the minister said it was not, when we all saw it, the PP demands that Sánchez fire the minister. internal affairs. Today is better than tomorrow”, said the general coordinator.
Sanchez once again confirmed his trust in Marlasca. And with it the whole government. So the PP raised the bar and said that if the minister does not resign and the president does not fire him, the responsibility will go to the tenant of the Palacio de la Moncloa. A leap that PSOE did not make even eight years ago.
On Wednesday, the crisis crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Feijo continues his tour of Latin America and, in statements given to the media at the Universidad del Desarrollo in Santiago de Chile, the PP leader assured: “We have seen the images and the video does not agree with the facts reported by Chile. The minister.. is either manipulating images, or the minister has manipulated reality, and for the minister of the interior to manipulate events where there were people who lost their lives, were mistreated and injured, Spain does not deserve that.”
What the PP does not specify is its position on the commission of inquiry presented by United We Can and other parliamentary allies of the coalition government, which is a much deeper decision than the demand for the resignation of the interior minister or even the president. as it seems
The main opposition party has not specified its position with Feijo on another continent, but the responses of spokesmen these days suggest that they will not join the parliamentary inquiry, which will put not only the government but also the national police in serious trouble. and the Civil Guard, which patrols the border and whose commanders would be required to appear and testify. A step that the PP will hardly take and that the PSOE has not taken either.
Source: El Diario
