Orriols corrects 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 combined votes of 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.

Subsequently, the leader of Aliança, Sílvia Orriols, made it public that it was a mistake by her fellow party member Rosa Maria Soberana. "She made a mistake in today's vote at the Board of Spokespersons. In no case does Aliança Catalana tolerate or endorse Vox calling Lluís Companys a murderer. Calling someone a murderer without evidence is not freedom of expression, it is slander," she wrote on social media to try to close the controversy over the controversial vote in favor of Vox by the party she leads.

Shortly after, the representative herself also referred to it, but she was mistaken again. In a first 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 make it clear: Aliança Catalana is NOT in favor of withdrawing it and condemns the ignominious posters against President Companys. We will submit a document to the board to place it on record," she pointed out with the intention of amending her vote. This Wednesday on 'El Matí de Catalunya Ràdio', Soberana assured that it was she who drafted the text. "I wrote it myself, but I asked for it to be trimmed," she said. She also stated that Orriols wrote the first tweet because she was at a hearing in Parliament, but that she did it when she had a moment. "I obviously spoke with her about it, but I would have rectified it anyway," she wanted to make clear. Regarding her error, she said that "the vote was fleeting and I made an incorrect interpretation of it".

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 poster labeling the republican an "assassin" in a window of its office in the chamber, and then took advantage of the floral offering in front of the sculpture that commemorates his execution to make it even worse. On the occasion of the event, in the courtyard of the Parliament Library, Vox placed even more posters, visible from the area of the offering, and left one in the same place where a wreath had been deposited in memory of the former president.

The Deputy Statute Committee sanctioned Garriga with a public admonition, because it considered that the Vox deputy had broken 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. Parliament also verbally admonished Sílvia Orriols for having accused the republican deputy Najat Driouech of "normalizing misogyny and Islamic fundamentalism" for wearing a veil. In this case, however, this Tuesday Aliança did not request to reconsider the Parliament's position regarding the sanction imposed on its leader.

Junts, ERC, the Comuns and the CUP exhibit anti-fascist posters at the Parliament plenary

The deputies of Junts, ERC, the Comuns, and the CUP showed anti-fascist posters against the far-right this Wednesday before the appearance of the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, before the plenary session of Parliament, following this new controversy with Aliança. On the posters, one could read: "The espadrille or the swastika, you choose". These political groups justified the action by recalling that just two weeks ago Aliança had already published a message on X saying "We have passed!" following the victory of the AfD in Saxony mocking the legendary poster by Pere Català i Pic created during the Spanish Civil War, where an espadrille appears crushing a swastika. The deputies of the PSC-Units declined to join the protest because, in their view, "it was not the time to perform a staging", just before Illa gave explanations regarding the errors in the PISA tests. Nevertheless, the party remarked on its "commitment to fight against hate speech and against fascism".