PP and Vox, still reeling from the acknowledged mistake by their members in the vote in favor of a European validation of sentences for various prisoners, including ETA terrorists, engaged in one of the dirtiest and most contentious sessions of the season during a debate in the Congress on a legal reform to dissolve associations that promote Francoism. Vox’s spokesperson, Ignacio Hoces, equated the guilt for atrocities committed during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 to both sides and even blamed the PSOE for the outbreak of the conflict. The performance of the PP spokesperson, Jaime de Olano, was even more abrasive and detached from the issue at hand. De Olano attempted to divert attention from the poor political level and inefficacy of the Popular Party’s opposition work by making corruption accusations against President Pedro Sánchez and his wife, Begoña Gómez, as well as against the alliances and pacts of the PSOE, especially with EH Bildu.
In a complicated internal day due to their vote in favor of the legal reform on European sentence enforcement, full of pressure from the more extreme sectors of the party and conservative media, the PP ramped up insults against the PSOE and the “corruption marriage of Sánchez and Gómez” during a debate in the Congress that had been pending for months to promote the dissolution of associations that promote Francoism, with humiliation to its victims. The associations law is 22 years old, and the Memory Democracy Law, approved two years ago, already included adjusting such regulations “to remember without forgetting,” as defended by PSOE spokesperson Raúl Díaz Marín. The PSOE spokesperson, Patxi López, considered the vote to initiate this parliamentary process as a good opportunity for all groups to once again make their position clear against Francoism. All of Sánchez’s coalition partners had no doubts and supported the legal reform, with some believing it fell short and came a bit late.
The focus of the discussion was on the interventions of Vox and PP, who engaged in a competition of indiscriminate insults against the PSOE and Sánchez, from which the Popular Party’s Olano wanted to emerge as more than just a winner. Olano was reprimanded multiple times and was on the verge of having his speaking rights revoked by the acting President of the Chamber, Alfonso Rodríguez Gómez de Celis. The PP deputy started by diverting from the topic to assert that there was a corruption case involving Begoña Gómez, a case involving the corruption of the Sánchez-Gómez marriage in La Moncloa. He emphasized that the recent ruling by the Provincial Court of Madrid not only validated Judge Juan Carlos Peinado’s investigation into the alleged influence peddling by the president’s wife but also went further to label the situation as “devastating,” claiming that it showed there had been no persecution against Gómez.
De Olano continued to relate this issue to a PSOE that he identified as an association “plagued by corruption.” He described the PSOE’s proposition as a ploy “to keep the memory of dictator Franco alive,” and he became even more agitated, accusing the PSOE of participating in events that praised terrorist organizations such as Hamas or allowing tributes to those who had murdered 850 ETA victims, including some from their own party. He called the current PSOE under Sánchez a “coward” and directed insults at the party’s Secretary of Organization, Santos Cerdán. The heated exchange overshadowed criticisms of historical revisionism and the promotion of fascism and Francoism made by other party representatives in the debate, who denounced the discourse of the far-right Vox and its attempts to equate victims from different periods of Spanish history.
