Marlaska blames the piolines controversy on the management of the PP, which asks for tribute to police victims of ETA

MADRID, 25 May. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has blamed the controversy over the reference to the tweets made by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to the lack of "self-criticism" of the PP for the "unworthy" conditions in which the policemen spent the night and civil guards on boats with drawings of children's characters during the 1-O independence referendum.

In the control session of the Government in Congress, the PP deputy Jaime Mateu Istúriz has censored the "complicit silence" of Grande-Marlaska despite the "insult" directed by Sánchez at the police and civil guards.

In addition, Mateu Istúriz reminded him of the recent jeers directed at the ministers at the swearing-in ceremony for the new national police officers at the Ávila School and asked him about not holding an act of homage to police victims of ETA that had been scheduled at the Wizink Center in Madrid.

Without going into details about these other questions, Grande-Marlaska lamented that the PP "lies so offensively." On this point, he reiterated his words in the plenary session last week to the effect that by tweets they were only referring to the "regrettable and undignified conditions" in which the agents were sent on boats, "difficulty their personal lives and their capacities operative".

"They have not been self-critical for four years, it hurts them but they do not know how to apologize," said Grande-Marlaska about the police device that the PP government designed to try to prevent the 2017 independence referendum. In addition, he has contrasted this with the offer of public employment, which in his view is the way of "loving" the State Security Forces and Bodies.

Mateu Istúriz has reproached Sánchez for "not leaving a puppet with a head" and has recalled that the police were sent to Catalonia to "defend the Constitution", for which they deserve the utmost respect and not resort to expressions such as tweets, since it is the one they use since independence. In addition, it has been ventured if the Government will end up using the word txakurra (dog in Basque), as called ETA to the agents of the Security Forces.

Grande-Marlaska has defended himself against criticism of "complicit silence" recalling that the PP bench did not say anything before the more than 800 transfers of ETA prisoners when the terrorist group was still killing or when "Police and Civil Guard means were used to cover crimes.

The Minister of the Interior has once again defended judicial control over interceptions of communications by the Police and the Civil Guard, disassociating himself from programs such as Pegasus which, as he has said on several occasions, has not been used in the Ministry of the Interior.

The deputy of JxCAT Miriam Nogueras has asked him to "demonstrate that sewers no longer exist" and has challenged him to give explanations about a series of companies that, according to her, are related to espionage against the Catalan independence movement.

"The negative facts are very difficult to prove. Spain is a full democracy and the only thing that is persecuted are facts that are likely to constitute a crime, not ideas. We do not have a militant Constitution," said Grande-Marlaska, in line with what he expressed yesterday in the Senate in two oral questions.

The minister added that "of course" the Police and the Civil Guard have communications interception programs, but framing their use in the fight against terrorism and other criminal phenomena such as human trafficking. "And always under the protection of the judiciary", he has emphasized.