PP and Cs battle it out
Rivera puts pressure on Rajoy as Judge Llarena demands clarification on referendum spending from Montoro; C’s demand explanation in parliament
The battle between the PP and Albert Rivera’s party to lead the right in Spain has provided Ciutadans more ammunition with the spat between Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena and the Minister of Finance Critóbel Montoro who has asserted on various occasions that “not one euro” of public money was spend on the October 1 referendum. Rajoy has publically backed Montoro’s version.
The government is still reeling for the fallout of the scandal involving Cristina Cifuentes at the head of the Madrid regional government with Rivera demanding her resignation and threatening to back a vote of no confidence which would hand Madrid over to the PSOE. Now, with the demand of the Supreme court for Montoro to justify his claims in detail which directly oppose the findings of the Guardia Civil’s investigation into misappropriation of public funds by the Generalitat in the expenses incurred in the referendum process, Cs want Montoro’s head on a platter. The Minister is in a bind and under attack also from the PSOE. As the Minister who has supervised the Generalitat’s finances for months, his department should have known of illegal spending if that did in fact occur. If the Guardia Civil is right, he is in trouble.
The second part of his predicament is that his claims, if they are proved to be true, complicate the judge’s case against those Catalan ministers and officials already imprisoned on remand and charged with misappropriation and even more seriously, the possibility of successfully convincing the courts in the UK, Switzerland, Belgium and Germany to extradite others in exile, including Carles Puigdemont.