Orriols rectifies her spokesperson, who intended to exempt Vox from sanction for calling Lluís Companys a "murderer"

BarcelonaSurprise at the Parliament's Board of Spokespersons. Aliança Catalana supported Vox this Tuesday in an attempt to prevent the spokesperson for the Spanish nationalist party, Joan Garriga, from being admonished for his insults against Lluís Companys, calling him a murderer. Despite the sum of the votes from these two parties and the PP, the proposal from Garriga's party did not go through and the sanction remains. Nevertheless, during the press conference before the media, Garriga thanked these two parties for their support for his request that the bureau reconsider the sanction for violating the code of conduct.

Following this, the leader of Aliança, Sílvia Orriols, made it public that it had been a mistake by her colleague Rosa Maria Soberana. "She made a mistake in today's vote at the Board of Spokespersons. Under no circumstances does Aliança Catalana tolerate or endorse Vox calling Lluís Companys a murderer. Calling someone a murderer without proof is not freedom of expression, it is slander," she wrote on social media to try to end the controversy over the controversial vote in favor of Vox by the party she leads.

Shortly after, the leader herself also referred to it, but she made another mistake. In an initial version of the message on X, the expression "Does it fit there?" slipped in, as if she had sent it to someone from Aliança to publish the message on X.

Subsequently, she deleted the tweet and published another one without that expression: "Today I made a mistake in the sense of the vote regarding the sanction for the Vox posters. I want to make it clear: Aliança Catalana is NOT in favor of withdrawing it and condemns the ignominious posters against President Companys. We will submit a written statement to the bureau to put it on record", she pointed out with the intention of correcting her vote.

CUP deputy Dani Cornellà has refuted that it was a mistake and has asserted that Aliança defended at the board of spokespersons that "saying that President Lluís Companys is a murderer is freedom of speech". "It is not a one-off mistake, do not lie, you have used this argument several times because it is what you think", the CUP leader retorted.

The events in question date back to last year. During the tribute to the former president at the Parliament, Vox hung a sign calling the republican an "assassin" in a window of their office in the chamber, and later took advantage of the floral offering in front of the sculpture that commemorates his execution to make it even bigger. On the occasion of the event, in the courtyard of the Parliament Library, Vox placed even more signs, visible from the offering area, and left one in the same place where a wreath had been laid in memory of the former president.

The Member's Statute Commission sanctioned Garriga with a public reprimand, because it considered that the Vox deputy had violated the code of conduct, although it also warned that to impose harsher penalties, the chamber's regulations had to be reformed. The very next day, the PSC, Junts, ERC, Comuns, and the CUP agreed on a reform of the regulations to incorporate the code of conduct, which includes possible sanctions for deputies. The Parliament also verbally reprimanded Sílvia Orriols for having accused the republican deputy Najat Driouech of "normalizing misogyny and Islamic fundamentalism" for wearing a veil. In this case, however, Aliança did not ask this Tuesday to reconsider the Parliament's position regarding the sanction imposed on its leader.