The judge of the National Court María Tardón has opened a criminal investigation into the entry into Ceuta of tens of thousands of migrant people on July 30 and 31, considering that there was an “alleged criminal conduct committed abroad that has seriously attacked the territorial integrity of Spain, using for this the massive entry into our country.” But her work does not fully convince the Government and the PSOE under the argument that she was on the PP lists for the Madrid City Council in 1999 with José María Álvarez del Manzano, and even became the third deputy mayor.
First it was the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, who described in an interview on Ser as “quite strange” that Tardón, whom he emphasized was a PP councilor in the Madrid City Council, asked the authors not to transmit the conclusions to their police superiors, since they are “matters related to national security.” If with everything the judge recounts she relies on the famous police report, which even includes photos that have nothing to do with Ceuta…”; “To date, she has shown signs that her impartiality can be doubted”…
Her words have not been disavowed. Quite the opposite. “Minister Puente is an authorized voice of the Government,” sources from La Moncloa point out. Asked explicitly about her colleague’s statements, the Government spokesperson, Elma Saiz, did not correct that opinion: “What she has done is what she always does; as a good jurist who has dedicated years to lawyering and as an expert in criminal matters, she values the importance of judicial independence.” When asked again: “We trust in the impartiality of Justice.” Nothing more.
But this questioning does not only occur in the Executive. Also from Ferraz, under the same perspective that Judge Tardón has ties to the PP. “I believe in the separation of powers, but in this country some curious cases are happening. It is evident that this judge has the past she has, and well, she will be impeccable in her profession, and I hope so, (but she starts a bit shaky, because if she requests a report that is not passed to the Government, and that report is passed to a media outlet that smells right-wing to me, it already starts a bit shaky,” said Montse Mínguez, PSOE spokesperson, in an interview on RNE.
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“The movement is shown by walking, and the movement that (Tardón) has had so far is that her past is as a PP councilor and what happened is that a report that she denied could be given to the Government was leaked to a media outlet, what a coincidence, one day before the president’s appearance in Congress,” she added.
To date, the Government maintains that it did not receive any warning or report that alerted about the massive entry of immigrants that occurred on July 30 and 31 in Ceuta. This Wednesday, the Executive will make public 40 documents from the Police, the Civil Guard, military intelligence, and the CNI, prepared between July 1 and August 1, none of which, government sources claim, affect national security. The documents include, besides reports, communications between Government departments on those days.
With this decision, Sánchez wants to close the debate and the opposition’s criticism about whether there were warnings or not and whether the response was correct or not. The Executive assures that those 40 documents are those currently in their possession and that if later others become known, they will also be made public, unless they affect national security, in which case they would be taken to the official secrets commission of Congress, to transfer them to the political parties of the Chamber.
