Rita Barberá, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Last weekend, the mayor of Valencia paid new tribute to the woman who directed the destiny of the city for 24 years. “Eight years ago today, Rita Barberá left us. I want to remember her with a phrase that has always inspired me: “Valencia is my passion and being mayor is my love,” wrote María José Català. It is possible that Català also remembers it for other reasons, as she executed it in a vote in which she had to resign her seat in the Senate.
Corruption is a weapon that kills by accumulation. For years the PP disdained accusations of all the most diverse forms of criminality that existed in this community. To understand it, things were so crazy that there was a time when being a PP urban councilor in the Valencian Community meant a presumption of guilt. The legal summaries fell like a wave. Even if not all of them resulted in a conviction, the most serious ended up convincing Rajoy’s PP that it had to get rid of the dead weight that Barberá represented. Català and the rest of the PP parliamentary group voted in favor of the request for his resignation in the Senate, where he had taken refuge to obtain power. The party abandoned her and she took it very badly.
The political death had begun earlier. In the 2015 local elections, her candidacy lost half of the votes she had received four years earlier. Barberá died alone and bitter in 2016 and the PP spent eight years in opposition. We had to wait until 2024 to obtain the judgment in the Taula case which accredits the illegal financing of the municipal campaigns of the PP of Barberá. Today, Català seeks to whitewash the figure of the former mayor, a decision that is consistent given the extent of money laundering during those years.
In the PSOE they are still breaking relations with José Luis Ábalos, whom they have demanded, without success, that he resign from his seat in Congress. The intention is similar to that of the PP with Barberá years ago: to do everything possible so that the fall of the former minister does not stain the party to irreparable levels.
It must be said that the chances of success are not very great. Any indication that Ábalos is questioning will impact the credibility of the PSOE. It will no longer be worth asking how Ábalos could choose someone like Koldo García to the ministry, but rather how Pedro Sánchez could choose someone like Ábalos for his government or keep him on the electoral lists in 2023.
Víctor de Aldama’s statement last week allowed the PP to announce that the best is yet to come in the case of Koldo and to foresee the immediate end of the government, but it also allowed the PSOE to ignore what this said testimony about Ábalos. The phantasmagoric description of the preparation of an alleged dinner of almost half of the socialist ministers with the Venezuelan Delcy Rodríguez allows them to characterize his entire statement as a lie. The same goes for the complaint that a minister and the number three of the PSOE agreed to bribe themselves for a few thousand euros, according to Aldama’s testimony. Concerning Ábalos, they no longer have much to say, that justice must act and that his name is familiar to them, but that he no longer has anything to do with them.
Political accountability in cases of corruption is one of those diffuse notions to which you react with firmness and clarity when it affects your opponent and with a strange distance if it happens within your own ranks. Others always have to resign, that would be more necessary. With yours, in the end we say that this subject has been closed for a long time.
Should anyone take specific responsibility for Ábalos’ previous presence in government? Now when the issue gets hotter it will be said that he has not even been prosecuted or charged but the latter reason is only because he is out of court and the Supreme Court will want the matter to be well cooked before to allow it to be served. a plate.
In the meantime, socialists only have the option of continuing to sweat in the meantime. This weekend, they celebrate the party congress to escape reality for a few moments, hug each other and wish each other the best. Until the arrival of Juan Lobato, the relative who always makes everyone nervous at family dinners.
The leader of the PSOE from Madrid was denounced by ABC information revealing that he had recorded before a notary the messages of a conversation with the minister’s chief of staff Óscar López about the alleged leak of the email that the boyfriend by Isabel Díaz Ayuso had sent to The prosecutor’s office recognizes their crimes. A notary? Keeping evidence in case you need to use it against other party members or because you’re a forgetful person? This Tuesday, he said as an example that it was in case he lost his cell phone, which is an unintentionally comical response. Like something from one of the geeky characters in a series like “La que se menace”.
The interview took place in March, but it was not until November that Lobato decided to visit the notary. This month, comments spread about the PSOE’s interest in seeking another candidate for the next elections in the Community of Madrid and the name of Minister Óscar López circulated. Was Lobato maneuvering to have an advantage that would allow him to neutralize Ferraz? If so, the bomb he was planning has exploded in his face, not to mention the state of shock his party is in.
The question is whether these messages confirm that the email from González Amador’s lawyer was in the possession of the PSOE before reaching the media. Lobato gave a few explanations on Tuesday – not much, less than three minutes and without accepting questions from reporters – which only made things even more confusing.
They told him that this email had already been published in the media and so he could use it during the Assembly plenary session. And here’s what Lobato considers a clarification: “Now, given the reaction of some leaders in my party, it seems that there was, in some way, a doubt about the veracity of what I been said there. I certainly don’t consider that, I don’t consider that what I was told was false, that it was false that the origin of this documentation was the media, because that would be very serious.
It’s like shouting in the street in front of the cameras: Hey, it’s possible that they cheated on me and that everyone is guilty of the crime of revealing secrets except me, but I don’t think that’s the case. case, because it would be very serious! And then send the registration quote to the nearest PP headquarters for them to benefit from.
The funny thing about all this is that the socialist leaders preferred not to speak publicly about Lobato’s strange relationship with his notary. In private, there was no such discretion. It is for this reason that Lobato began his speech to journalists with a terrifying sentence: “I certainly summoned you because I am concerned about the reaction, the blockade, the lynching that has taken place on the part of certain leaders of my party and which I honestly do not understand. “As a way of declaring war on Moncloa, it’s not bad. Regarding his way of speaking (“reaction, slash, lynching”), nothing is possible.
Friday, the start of the socialist congress, is also the day when Lobato will have to testify before a Supreme Court judge and take with him copies of the messages he gave to the notary. Some will hold their breath until they know what will happen with all of this. Taking responsibility for the mistake of having Ábalos in government, which Sánchez has not done so far, is already quite a complicated task. Not to mention Lobato suddenly appears and starts jumping on stage with some matches and several sticks of dynamite in hand.
