Marlaska and her dome in Interior flee from the Senate

Neither Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska nor members of his leadership like the Senate. Failed in Congress, he and his senior officials fled the Upper House and with the help of the PSOE systematically dodged all requests to appear from the different parliamentary groups. For six months the Interior Commission has not substantiated calls beyond the unavoidable ones to process projects or bills despite the 93 requests for assistance from senior Interior officials that have not been attended to.

The latest events related to the ministry -the unappealable ruling of the Supreme Court on the dismissal of Colonel Diego Pérez de los Cobos and the resignation, just a few days before, of the General Director of the Civil Guard, María Gámez, after her husband was charged in a case of corruption – have not been sufficient reasons for the requests for appearances to be accepted either.

The Popular Party has registered a request for Gámez to go to the Chamber but it will not be attended. The Board of the commission will vote on it after Easter but no one doubts that the result will be negative. On this occasion, unlike previous petitions, the argument will be solid: Gámez no longer has any ties to the Interior and, consequently, is not obliged to meet the requirement of an ordinary parliamentary commission, something different would be if it were a commission research.

The parliamentary groups amortize not only the attendance of Gámez but also that of any other high representative of the Ministry in view of the null interest that they have shown to date in appearing in the Senate.

From the Popular Party they express their indignation at what they interpret as a “tease” of the department led by Grande-Marlaska with the coverage of the Socialists because the only appearance that has finally obtained the approval of the majority of the PSOE in the Table of the Commission, last week, has been that of the Director General of Civil Protection, Leonardo Marcos, to report, on the 17th, on the policy of his service with an eye on Horizon 2035 and on the efforts and deployment carried out in front of the Philomena storm that hit Spain between January 6 and 11, 2021.

The petition was registered by the PP in January 2021 and will now be carried out with more than two years of delay to account for a specific meteorological phenomenon. A good part of the chamber groups have already announced that they will not attend it.

On the contrary, requests for appearances related to the three sentences in the Pérez de los Cobos case have remained in the drawer; with the serious events in the Valla de Melilla that resulted in more than twenty deaths and provoked the disapproval of Marlaska in Congress; with the waves of immigrants in the Canary Islands; with the transfer to Navarra of the powers of the Civil Traffic Guard or with the lack of means at the airports, mainly to control the flow of travelers during the pandemic.

None of these requests presented by different parliamentary forces in the Senate has obtained the green light so far.. The Socialists, the majority in the Commission Table, stop them all to avoid a control that the Ministry of the Interior does not want.

The last sessions of the Senate Interior Commission were held on October 26 and September 13, 2022. The first of them to rule on the Explosives Precursors bill and the second, to fill the vacancy of the second vice-presidency of the commission.

You have to go back to November 25, 2021 to find the last time a senior Ministry official appeared. On that occasion it was the then director of the Civil Guard, María Gámez, who came at the initiative of the Government itself to report on the actions of the Civil Guard in relation to the demographic challenge.

To the appearance were added the petitions presented by the groups of the Chamber in relation, among other matters, with the dismissal of Pérez de los Cobos that had occurred eight months before or with the participation of Gámez herself in rallies of the PSOE. Only the PP accumulated 12 requests to appear, none of which had been answered.

The now former director of the Civil Guard avoided providing any information of interest to the senators, limiting herself to stressing that the minister has the right to make his team with people he trusts and to be ironic with the consideration of a “state matter” that was intended to lead to the dismissal of Pérez de los Cobos.

At that time, the National Court had agreed with the Ministry, considering the dismissal of the head of the Madrid Civil Guard Command as legal.. Gámez clung to this, assuming that the interest shown in this matter by the opposition forces was “merely political to damage the Government”. And he added bluntly: “I am not going to talk about this matter.”

Now, the Supreme Court has ruled against the dismissal of the Civil Guard command ordered by Marlaska and executed by Gámez considering it “illegal” and an example of “deviation of power” and the former director of the Civil Guard has resigned after her husband was charged in a case of corruption.