The Congress definitively withdraws the press accreditation from the ultra agitator Vito Quiles

BarcelonaCongress has decided to definitively withdraw the press accreditation of ultra agitator Vito Quiles. The bureau of the lower house took this decision after having already decided to suspend him provisionally in May and withdrawing it for three months. This Tuesday, the progressive majority of the Congress bureau, with the votes of the representatives of the PSOE and Sumar, decided to definitively withdraw his accreditation after analyzing the proposal from the legal counsel. Specifically, three very serious offenses were taken into account: two "obstructions of press conferences" and the "dissemination on social media of images obtained by violating the house's rules," parliamentary sources note. The PP abstained from voting on the bureau's decision.

"The reiteration, while already suspended, for previous serious infractions implies the classification as very serious of each of the three new infractions now resolved, which each entail the definitive withdrawal of accreditation," the same sources report. The fact is that the Congress bureau had already provisionally suspended the accreditation of Quiles, linked to the pseudo-media outlet EDATV (Estado de Alarma TV) by Javier Negre, due to the accumulation of complaints regarding his behavior. There were up to nine complaints against him that had to be resolved and which led to his definitive expulsion if the sanctioning regime of the new parliamentary regulations were applied.

For some time now, Quiles' interruptions at press conferences of parliamentary groups in Congress have been common, in addition to intimidation of journalists and politicians from left-wing parties. One of the disciplinary proceedings opened against him, which has been the trigger for his expulsion, was the unauthorized recording of images of former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in a restricted area of the chamber last December.

Congress staff warned him that it was forbidden to record in that restricted space and to publish the images, but he recorded and uploaded them to social media anyway. With the regulations in hand, which Congress reformed to be able to act precisely against far-right agitators—Bertrand Ndongo, from Periodista Digital, also has his accreditation temporarily suspended—, Quiles faced an expulsion of between eleven days and three months. However, given the repeated offenses, the Bureau of the chamber has decided that this expulsion should be permanent.

The Bureau has also resolved the proceeding that Quiles had open for having interrupted a press conference by the PSOE spokesperson, Patxi López. Apart from these two cases, in July the Bureau sanctioned him again with a one-month withdrawal of his accreditation for having interrupted a press conference by the Secretary-General of Podemos, Ione Belarra.

Despite this series of offenses, the PP did not vote in the debate held this Tuesday by the Congress Bureau. The populars, in fact, had already shown themselves against the decision of the PSOE and Sumar to temporarily suspend Quiles' accreditation in May. The far-right agitator, in fact, has no limitations in the Senate, where the PP has an absolute majority. It is no coincidence that last February he participated in an electoral event of the populars, although Quiles' positions bring him much closer to the theses of Vox.