He Congress and Senate They should have known this Monday afternoon what measures the government of Pedro Sanchez guarantee to its international partners, and in particular NATO, that in Spain “there is no interference … “external relations that undermine shared security and trust in intelligence-sharing channels,” referring to China and Russia.
The question was on the agenda of the Joint Commission on National Security as an oral question to which the Government had to answer, and it had been published for more than three months in the Official Bulletin of the Cortes. from the past August 29 The Executive knew that it might be called upon to respond as soon as this body convened a session.
However, although Congress transmitted the agenda to the Government last week, the Secretary of State for Relations with the Cortes, Rafael Simancassent a letter to the President of the Commission, the popular Edurne Uriartejust a few hours before the start of the session, to request the postponement of this and two other questions to “a future session”.
The reason given was “the impossibility for senior officials of the competent department to be present” without identifying them or indicating the reason which prevented them all from appearing.
The detail is not minor since the Congress Regulations allows ministers, secretaries of state or undersecretaries to answer questions addressed to the Executive.
Simancas did not explain why the Secretary of State for Security, Aïna Calvo, who went to the Commission to answer the rest of the questions with previously written answers, was able to give or read the answer to the three postponed questions.
In this sense, the popular denounce that there is not one ministry capable of answering this question and the two other questions that the government has managed to put aside – the cancellation of Israeli contracts and the support offered to the previous director of the CNI – but three: Defense, Interior and the Presidency.
11 senior officials
From there, they count up to 11 senior officials likely to have answered these questions: “three ministers, five secretaries of state and three undersecretaries”, underlines the party he chairs. Alberto Nuñez Feijóo.
When asked about this, official sources in the Ministry of the Presidency refused to answer who were the senior officials responsible for answering these questions and why none of the other 10 senior officials indicated by the PP were able to answer them.
The People’s Party denounces that the postponed issues are of “particular importance” and emphasizes that national security “requires transparency, accountability and political presence at the highest level, especially when it comes to issues that affect the trust of our allies, the functioning of intelligence services and the effective protection of citizens.”
From there, they accuse the government of “deliberate evasion of responses” and warn that this attitude “does not precisely contribute to strengthening this confidence; but, on the contrary, to generate doubts about the willingness of the Executive to be accountable to the Cortes Generales.
The Congress and the Senate will enter a non-working period on January 1, so it is predictable that the National Security Commission We won’t see each other again until February at the earliest. With the maneuver carried out, the Government is gaining time and clarifying the issue at least until then.
The three questions which now remain unanswered were recorded by the popular senator Jose Antonio Monago. The one relating to the guarantee that there is no “external interference” in Spain was registered this summer after the controversial contract awarded by the Ministry of the Interior to Huawei and led the US Congress to request a review of the sending of intelligence information to Spain. Monago’s question literally highlights the “possible links of the Executive with actors linked to Russia and China”.
In addition, the government also did not want to explain to the Cortes whether the level of support it provided to the former director of the National Intelligence Center (CNI), Paz Esteban, after her accusation for actions in the exercise of her functions, “was proportional to the institutional responsibility that she represented, or if it is conditioned by the political balance with the independence groups, whose support is essential for the current parliamentary majority”.
This question was published in the Official Journal of the Cortès since July 29, even longer than that relating to external interference.
And the third problem that Simancas managed to avoid is that the government gave its assessment “on the impact that the termination of contracts with Israel would have on the national security of Spain.”
It is the most recent of the three but it was still published for more than two months, on October 14. The agenda of the commissions is set in advance by a majority of the votes of the members of its Bureau. In the National Security Committee, since it is a joint Congress-Senate committee, the Popular Party holds the majority and that is why it was able to ask these three uncomfortable questions for the Executive. But the practice is to settle things after listening to the spokespersons of the different parliamentary groups.
Simancas managed to modify the agenda a posteriori since the Regulations of Congress allow changes to be introduced at the request of two parliamentary groups. On Monday, the PSOE and Sumar supported the last-minute postponement requested by Simancas.
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