Cristina Ibarrola (Pamplona, 1969) is already the mayoress of Pamplona and her investiture has cracked the entente that the PSOE has maintained since 2019 with EH Bildu in Navarra. Ibarrola has been elected mayor of the Navarrese capital in the second vote, since no other candidate has achieved an absolute majority. EH Bildu has presented the candidacy of Joseba Asiron and the Socialist Party of Navarra has voted blank. The Socialists have maintained their commitment and have not provided their five votes to Asiron, who has had the support of Geroa Bai (two) and Contigo Navarra (one).

Cristina Ibarrola, with the nine votes from UPN and the two from the PP, has added 11 supports, while Asiron has also achieved the same number of supports by having the votes of EH Bildu (eight) plus those of Geroa Bai (two). and with you Navarra (one). Being the candidate with the most votes last 28-M, Ibarrola has been invested as mayor in a plenary chaired by Koldo Martínez (Geroa Bai), the councilor with whom it was speculated that it could be the third way between Ibarrola and Asiron. The result of the vote has provoked cries of joy from the regionalist supporters concentrated in the Town Hall square. A group of nationalist supporters responded with shouts of “UPN, kanpora” (UPN, out, in Basque).

The celebration of the investiture plenary session in Pamplona has developed in absolute normality inside the iconic City Hall while two concentrations were held in the surroundings called by followers of UPN and EH Bildu. Barely a hundred supporters of the regionalist formation have met in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento while another group was concentrated in the Plaza de San Francisco. Members of the National Police, the Provincial Police and the Urban Guard have been deployed around the Town Hall and in the Plaza del Castillo while the investiture plenary session was taking place.

Socialist distancing from Bildu

The Valle de Egües City Council has also confirmed the tense relationship between PSOE and EH Bildu after the 28-M elections. In Egües, the third municipality in Navarra with more than 20,000 inhabitants, the Socialists have not supported the candidate of the Otegi coalition, making it easier for Xurine Peñas of UPN to be appointed mayor. The PSOE of Navarra needs at least the abstention of the Otegi coalition to ensure that María Chivite is again elected president of the foral community. Bildu will have to position himself in his agreement with the PSOE in Navarra after a legislature in which he facilitated the investiture of the socialist president and guaranteed her stability by approving all her budgets.

The Valle de Egües plenary session has become the foretaste of what has happened later in Pamplona, the Navarrese capital in which UPN aspires to continue governing but which EH Bildu claims if it obtains the support of the Socialist Party of Navarra (PSN), Geroa Bai and Contigo Navarra.

In Egües, Peñas has added her six votes and that of the PP councilor while the Bildu candidate has also added another seven supports with the PSN (2 councilors) voting for her own candidate. A tie that has placed Peñas, a 41-year-old nurse who has been affiliated with UPN for barely a year, as mayor, having been the candidate with the most votes at the polls.

The magistrate who is instructing the so-called 'Mediator case' has once again summoned the one she considers the leader of the plot, the former deputy of the PSOE Juan Bernardo Fuentes Curbelo -Tito Berni for the network-, for an expanded statement as the accused.

In addition, a calligraphic test will also be carried out, as exposed by judge Ángeles Lorenzo-Cáceres in a ruling to which EL MUNDO has had access. Fuentes Curbelo will sit before her again on June 29, as will her nephew, Taishet Fuentes, who will undergo the same handwriting analysis.

Likewise, the instructor of the case has summoned six other people as investigated at the end of the month.

Among other things, the magistrate requests the technical report of the General State Intervention on the file filed against one of the farmers investigated in the case by the service of reimbursement of subsidies from European funds.

The reactive magistrate, in this way, the case after a few weeks of silence. The battery of summonses will begin on June 28 with two women, apparently relatives of one of the businessman linked to what the magistrate has dubbed a “criminal organization.”.

They will be followed by two other men, also cited as accused.

The next day, Fuentes Curbelo and his nephew will once again undergo interrogation by the instructor, who requests an extension of their previous statements.. It will be later when the calligraphic expert is carried out on both.

The magistrate, in addition, has yet to resolve the request of the defense of Marco Antonio Navarro Tacoronte to revoke the consent that his client gave at the beginning of the process so that the agents could access their electronic devices. The motives of the so-called 'mediator' are the basis of the procedure.

In addition, the lawyer Rachid Mohamed asked the judge to urge the unit to make a detailed report or, failing that, “provide documentation” on the appearances and testimonials of his sponsor.. Also to certify whether or not he was “assisted by legal representation”. He also asked why his client changed his public defender twice without being told the reason.

Thus, he requested the dismissal of the fraud case be incorporated into the cause, which was archived, but which nonetheless started the Mediator case since it was through this procedure that Navarro Tacoronte made his telephone number available to the investigators, leaving the discovered photographs and meetings. Now he wants it back and his analysis stopped.

In January 2022, he contains the indictment, handed over his phone and allowed investigators to analyze it.. On February 22, he testified again in court and put on the table the name of Fuentes Curbelo -'Tito Berni'- and his nephew, Taishet Fuentes, who had succeeded his uncle as General Director of Agriculture of the Canarian Government.

On April 12, 2022, the so-called mediator made a new statement in which he delved deeper into the essence of the “criminal group”. That day, he introduced the General of the Civil Guard Francisco Espinosa, the only member of the plot that the judge put in jail. Only two months later Taishet Fuentes was dismissed as general director of the Canarian Government with the (still secret) investigations open on the channel. The regional president, Ángel Víctor Torres,

Rachid Mohamed Hammu moves through the Mediator case with firmness and an advantageous vision of the courts. The lawyer of the man who gives his name to the plot, Marco Antonio Navarro Tacoronte, dominates the breadth of Justice because he has been in its most important boxes: as a judge, as a prosecutor and now as a lawyer.

It is the reverse of his client, whom he has subjected to isolation that, he understands, should have accompanied him since the matter was made public.. Owner of a discreet inaccessibility, he grants this interview fleeing from all hyperbole and with the conviction of being able to purify the matter.

Is Marco Antonio Navarro Tacoronte as indomitable as he seems? Since I've known him, he doesn't do anything without consulting me and he follows all the instructions I give him. I don't know how it was before. Why did you agree to defend him? When a criminal lawyer is offered the possibility of intervening in one of the most important corruption proceedings in Spain in which such important elements as a former deputy and a retired Civil Guard general appeared, looks like a challenge. It seemed like there was a lot of procedural complexity and that was a challenge for me.. In its day it was presented to me like this, but later I have verified that this sophistication is not appreciated in the organization. Apart from all this, my client always showed me a lot of willingness, a lot of respect and that encouraged me.. What is the Mediator case? Journalistically it is one of the biggest corruption scandals and judicially it is difficult for me to define it because I do not know if it is a single case or several. What was initially presented as an organized structure that aimed to commit crimes, has now been separated into pieces: one has been referred to the European Public Prosecutor's Office, others are secret. At this procedural moment, I don't know if there is a connection between them or not.. We would not be talking about a case of organized corruption, but about various criminal episodes that will be judged independently. Are you saying that the matter is not sustained? As it is being proposed right now, not because of the knowledge that I have of the procedure. Why? ?As it is presented in the media and socially, the vision that is held of the case of that hierarchical group, with two heads that organize a series of crimes that are going to be committed later, is not maintained. From the actions, this sophistication in that organization is not appreciated. Yes, there may be criminal acts, but not in that way in which it is proposed. The proceedings point to a former PSOE deputy, Juan Bernardo Fuentes Curbelo, using his position to do business…. That is what appears and is the reason why this procedure is so publicly relevant. There are reports from the Police that affirm this, but from there to talk about an organization with that complexity… The forcefulness of the Udef reports contradicts what you say. They speak of an organized structure and the judge of a “criminal organization”. I do not deny the reality of what the reports say, but I believe that as we have been shown, with that magnitude, with that degree of importance, with that distribution of roles It seems that it is a criminal organization created to commit crimes and that, in my opinion, is going to be very difficult to justify.. What I criticize as a lawyer is the form of the procedure, especially due to the procedural attitude towards my client. There is a reality and I imagine that there will be some type of irregularities because if not, it would not make sense. Navarro Tacoronte raised suspicions about other deputies, can you provide evidence to support those statements that you made in the media? I am unaware of the accusations and I try not to see what happened and what he said. My strategy, my personal one, does not involve involving anyone. I am focused on his defense because he is facing important crimes that carry many years in prison. My objective is, if not to obtain his acquittal, to minimize all the criminal reproach. The rest I don't care. I have no relationship with any political party. I'm independent. So, can your client prove these accusations or can't? I haven't even raised it with him. I am thinking about other things of a procedural nature and working on the irregularities that I have noticed. What are they? You even went so far as to ask for rigor. What was he referring to? When he spoke of rigor, he did so both in form and substance. For example, in the way of referring to my defendant. In a hearing room they have referred to him in a derogatory way. It is about a man who is being investigated, true, but his innocence is still presumed. In addition, the magistrate has made some statements that are inappropriate for someone of her position. You cannot pronounce on criminal records. I asked for rigor in the forms. Regarding the merits, there are people linked to my client who have been arrested when it is clearly seen that they were not related to the case. The case has been secret for more than a year and the files were claimed in February. What is rigorous in a procedure of these characteristics is that, if we are going to investigate crimes, the correct thing to do is to first analyze the files to see if there are signs of irregularity. He maintains that it has been magnified. Absolutely. It is not necessary to minimize importance because it has it. Whenever there is a crime in which authorities are involved, it must be given the importance it deserves and all the reproach that fits this particular type of conduct. It has been magnified because elements that are procedurally irrelevant but which are socially striking have transcended. When he took over, he also slipped that there were form defects in the instruction. Almost always in all instructions there are form defects but I think that in this one there are some that are decisive, that may have some effectiveness within the procedure. We will assert them and they can turn the matter around. Your latest requests point to the origin of the investigation, access to your client's mobile phones, what scope could they have? I think that the pillar on which the cause is sustained, or the causes, is the access to their mobiles. I must question everything that happens in the procedure and the irregularities in the origin are usually decisive and in this case there are. I said it before, there may be surprises. You deactivated your client from public life after a very expansive television route. I think that if we are going to demand respect, we have to give an adequate image. We cannot lend ourselves to any type of media spectacle that, moreover, does not bring us anything positive. I gave him a choice: show or defense. And he chose. Do you trust that you can blow up the Mediator case? Yes, I do, in fact they hired me for that. I hope for a good result. Are you worried that your client's overexposure makes him less serious in court? He hasn't had any kind of influence on the proceedings. Media overexposure must be taken care of from an image and seriousness point of view. Keep in mind that I am only the lawyer, I give legal advice. I cannot control the extra-procedural reality or what my client wants to do outside. Are you worried about what may be to come? A judicial procedure is like a surgical intervention. No matter how innocuous it may seem at first, there is always a risk and that must be assumed.. We are in a procedure with a lot of media pressure, with a lot of political pressure. It's complicated. If you didn't have all this around you, it would be a very normal procedure with many defense possibilities. You have dealt with cases of special complexity. It is in the case of masks from the Canary Islands. Are there names that are interconnected with the Mediator? That issue is much more complex. I thought the Mediator case was infinitely more complex, but I was wrong. Masks is a complex public procurement issue because it occurs at a certain time and as delicate as the state of alarm, with a specific regulation that was the Covid. There are no names connected. They have nothing to do with it. At least, for now. The number of actors involved in the investigation is surprising.. The cause is what it is. I am also surprised that so many people are working on a procedure like this. I sincerely believe that he does not deserve it. I dont know what has happened.

Is there a risk that the process will take forever? That risk is always in Justice. It must be taken into account that it is a peculiar procedure. There are many bodies and institutions involved to assist the judge. It has a reinforcement magistrate, has the collaboration or assistance of the National Police, Internal Affairs of the Civil Guard, the Tax Agency and the General State Intervention. So I can only trust that this disbursement and this investment that is going to be made in the procedure will result in speed in the investigation. Is the Mediator used as a throwing weapon?
Completely. Every day there is news even if there is not. Whenever there is an investigation and a politician is involved, the judicial procedure is used as a thrown weapon. Always. And that makes the process quite difficult.
Because?
Because there are political pressures and there everyone tries to use the resources at their disposal for political attrition and this is a particularly difficult year. Mediator is a pretty hot topic that I think they're exploiting.

A tough campaign, clearly pro-independence, with Carles Puigdemont leading the charge and which recovers the dialectic of confrontation with the State. This is Junts' strategy for the general elections in July, in which it hopes to defeat ERC, which left 300,000 votes in the municipal elections, and demonstrate the failure of the dialogue between the Republicans and Pedro Sánchez.

“Now it's time to defend Catalonia”. This was the declaration of intent of Miriam Nogueras, head of the Barcelona de Junts list for the general elections. Nogueras was already in Congress for the last legislature and is one of the closest to former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who was directly involved in the nomination of the candidate by recommending to the other candidate, former counselor Jaume Giró, that he withdraw his candidacy.

Nogueras has already shown his toughest profile not only in speeches in Congress but also in gestures such as moving the Spanish flag away in his appearances. Now he assures that Junts is not going to Congress to “invest any Spanish president”, but to “defend Catalonia”, since in recent years “we have lost opportunities, well-being, resources and competences, the country project we have is seriously in risk”, in a veiled criticism of ERC, which has become one of the partners of the Sánchez governments.

This attack on the Republicans, together with the radicalization of the independence message, centered on the end of the dialogue with the State and again the commitment to secessionist unilateralism, will be the main workhorse of Junts in this campaign, taking advantage of the drop in votes of CKD in the municipalities.

Junts considers that it should return to a more belligerent discourse given the possibility that Alberto Núñez Feijóo's PP will govern, since they consider that with a popular government in Madrid, if it also has the support of Vox, they could once again agitate the streets to increase a sovereignist process that is practically moribund with the commitment of the ERC dialogue.

Puigdemont's party wants to discredit ERC before the sovereignist electorate for its agreements with the Socialists and for this reason urges to recover the train crash. For this reason, the former president will multiply his appearances, always at a distance, since if he returns to Spain he runs the risk of being arrested, in addition to having the intervention of other Junts leaders, convicted of 1-O.

Likewise, the Junts candidacy will have other people related to Puigdemont, such as Eduard Pujol, former spokesman for JxCat in Parliament, who was one of the most belligerent deputies during the Quim Torra governments and who fell out of favor due to a complaint of harassment that was archived and the complainants prosecuted. It could go number three, since number two would be another journalist, Pilar Calvo, while the fourth place will be occupied by the jurist Josep Pagès, both deputies in Congress in this legislature. The former mayor of Girona, Marta Madrenas, will be the head of the list for this demarcation while the leader of the Democrats, Toni Castellà, could aspire to the Senate, according to party sources. The presence of the new president of the Parliament, Anna Erra, and Xavier Trias as mayor of Barcelona would be the other two elements that would make it easier for Junts to try a more “institutional” clash with the State while waiting for the regional elections two years from now. .

A tough campaign, clearly pro-independence, with Carles Puigdemont leading the charge and which recovers the dialectic of confrontation with the State. This is Junts' strategy for the general elections in July, in which it hopes to defeat ERC, which left 300,000 votes in the municipal elections, and demonstrate the failure of the dialogue between the Republicans and Pedro Sánchez.

“Now it's time to defend Catalonia”. This was the declaration of intent of Miriam Nogueras, head of the Barcelona de Junts list for the general elections. Nogueras was already in Congress for the last legislature and is one of the closest to former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who was directly involved in the nomination of the candidate by recommending to the other candidate, former counselor Jaume Giró, that he withdraw his candidacy.

Nogueras has already shown his toughest profile not only in speeches in Congress but also in gestures such as moving the Spanish flag away in his appearances. Now he assures that Junts is not going to Congress to “invest any Spanish president”, but to “defend Catalonia”, since in recent years “we have lost opportunities, well-being, resources and competences, the country project we have is seriously in risk”, in a veiled criticism of ERC, which has become one of the partners of the Sánchez governments.

This attack on the Republicans, together with the radicalization of the independence message, centered on the end of the dialogue with the State and again the commitment to secessionist unilateralism, will be the main workhorse of Junts in this campaign, taking advantage of the drop in votes of CKD in the municipalities.

Junts considers that it should return to a more belligerent discourse given the possibility that Alberto Núñez Feijóo's PP will govern, since they consider that with a popular government in Madrid, if it also has the support of Vox, they could once again agitate the streets to increase a sovereignist process that is practically moribund with the commitment of the ERC dialogue.

Puigdemont's party wants to discredit ERC before the sovereignist electorate for its agreements with the Socialists and for this reason urges to recover the train crash. For this reason, the former president will multiply his appearances, always at a distance, since if he returns to Spain he runs the risk of being arrested, in addition to having the intervention of other Junts leaders, convicted of 1-O.

Likewise, the Junts candidacy will have other people related to Puigdemont, such as Eduard Pujol, former spokesman for JxCat in Parliament, who was one of the most belligerent deputies during the Quim Torra governments and who fell out of favor due to a complaint of harassment that was archived and the complainants prosecuted. It could go number three, since number two would be another journalist, Pilar Calvo, while the fourth place will be occupied by the jurist Josep Pagès, both deputies in Congress in this legislature. The former mayor of Girona, Marta Madrenas, will be the head of the list for this demarcation while the leader of the Democrats, Toni Castellà, could aspire to the Senate, according to party sources. The presence of the new president of the Parliament, Anna Erra, and Xavier Trias as mayor of Barcelona would be the other two elements that would make it easier for Junts to try a more “institutional” clash with the State while waiting for the regional elections two years from now. .

Jaume Collboni has become the new mayor of Barcelona thanks to the votes of the commons and the PP, which, out of a sense of State and culminating in a historic agreement against the independence movement, has decided to support the socialist candidate to prevent the separatist Xavier Trias from will govern the Catalan capital together with ERC.

Collboni has gathered 23 votes, two more than necessary to reach an absolute majority, and has thus been able to unseat the winner of the elections on May 28. Trias has remained in the 16 supports by collecting only those of ERC, with which he had reached a governance agreement that the bases of the two parties came to validate on the morning of this Saturday.

But less than an hour before the town council's plenary session began, Ada Colau's party announced that it would lend its votes to the socialist candidate and go over to the opposition, thus fulfilling the condition that the leader of the PP in Barcelona, Daniel Sirera, had set Friday to contribute to Collboni's inauguration.

“I have kept my word. I said that I would not make a separatist mayor nor would I allow the commons to be in the Government of Barcelona”, the popular said minutes after Collboni was anointed, to immediately acknowledge that “it has not been easy to support a socialist mayor, our main adversary, 36 days before the general elections”.

“The most comfortable thing would have been to vote for myself, but a common pro-independence front would have been formed in Barcelona against the future government of the PP,” added Sirera, who has demanded from the new socialist mayor “responsibility for forming a government in which the common ones are there and show that Colau is history and turn it into a bad dream”.

The claim of the popular is not trivial, given that last Thursday Collboni officially presented his candidacy, assuring that, after being invested, he would form an Executive with the commons.

In fact, Colau has ratified that they will go to the opposition, but that their will is to reach agreements with the PSC given the impossibility of the socialists governing the city with only ten councilors. The leader of the commons has assured that they have voted for Collboni as “the lesser evil”, when her wish was to have formed a left-wing tripartite with the PSC and ERC.

Trias returns to his retirement

This was the anger of Xavier Trias El Mundo

Tremendously tense has been the intervention of Trias in the plenary session. Before announcing that he will renounce his act as councilor to return to the political retirement from which he came out to try to become mayor again, Carles Puigdemont's candidate has snapped at Colau and Collboni: “They are ashamed to look me in the face”, while booing them against the new mayor thundered in the Saló de Cent in Barcelona, the gala room where the ceremony was held. “They do nonsense, they create an atmosphere of confrontation. You are doing the country a disservice.. At 76 years old, I was already saying it: 'If I don't become mayor, they'll be damned', the winner of the elections urged on, to later melt into a hug with Ernest Maragall, who has branded the agreement that has led to the defeat of secessionism in Barcelona.

The two defeated secessionist councilors received in person the consolation of the leaders of their political formations. It was proven that, indeed, Trias was the Junts candidate, no matter how much he hid it during the campaign, when its president, the condemned Laura Borràs, and its general secretary, the pardoned Jordi Turull, came to comfort him.

And it was proven how much it hurt ERC to see its independence front fail when Oriol Junqueras did the same with Maragall and later lamented saying: “We see a new pact of shame, a pact to prevent independence from ruling the capital of our country. A new State operation before which we cannot remain indifferent».

Pere Aragonès issued a similar complaint after receiving the municipal delegation at the Palau de la Generalitat, as required by protocol. The head of the Catalan Executive maintained that on the election of Collboni “an agreement is projected at the State level between the two great parties” and vindicated the will to decide of the Catalan nation.

Deceased Collboni attended the ceremony after having to cross the Plaza Sant Jaume under escort in a hostile climate, as hundreds of secessionists were waiting to recriminate him for the cry of “botifler” that would have brought Trias down from the Mayor's Office.

“I want to be the mayor of all”, the socialist had proclaimed a few minutes before, in a message delivered first in Catalan and then in Spanish, which he completed by promising “not to be dogmatic”, defending that he is a “legitimate” mayor and demanding “respect » for the councilors who, giving him their support, believed that voting for him «was the best thing for the city of Barcelona today».

Eight years after his first attempt and, despite not having been able to win the elections in any of the contests in which he participated, Collboni tied up the Mayor's Office of Barcelona using the fear that the institution would be devoured by nationalism.