"I don't know what this news is all about now." That is how the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, avoided answering the question about the Operation Catalonia Papers raised by ElNacional.cat in a breakfast conference organized by Europa Press. "Things always happen for a reason in Spain, they are not coincidences. I don't know what the interest is: whether to delegitimize the PP, so that they keep quiet, or so that only some can govern and decide for everybody, I understand that it's something like that".
Ayuso (PP): "Sorry but I feel very far away from... well, not far, because I speak about Catalonia every chance I get but this time - and I speak positively about it, of course...but I don't know"
This was the response of one of the most influential voices in the People's Party (PP) to the information published yesterday by El Nacional that incriminated the former Spanish prime minister and PP leader, Mariano Rajoy, in Operation Catalonia. The documents revealed that Rajoy was aware of the existence of the parapolice plot and that it was he, together with the former interior minister, Jorge Fernández Díaz, who decided to launch the actions in September 2012. Ayuso avoided commenting on the substance of the question, and in fact, at first she professed ignorance of the story: in fact, the Operation Catalonia papers received little coverage in the Madrid press.
Ayuso is not the first PP leader to be questioned on the revelations. The president of Murcia, Fernando López Miras, also reacted to the Operation Catalonia papers in response to questions from El Nacional. It was after a Forum Europe breakfast conference also featuring Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Party leader Feijoo did not say a word about it, but the autonomous president from Murcia replied that "the first thing to do is to ask Rajoy if it is true or not", stressing that the former Spanish prime minister "put all the machinery of the state at the service of the defence and unity of Spain and the general interest of all Spaniards".
"If there is someone who has put the entire Spanish government, the power of the state and the competences given to him by the Constitution to be able to stop a coup d'état in Catalonia, it was Rajoy", proclaimed López Miras, who asserted that the former PM "made efficient and bold use of the authority given to him by Article 155 of the Constitution".
Ayuso, on devolution of immigration: "It's all very well to give 'a la carte' powers"
Asked about the transfer to the Catalan government of competency for immigration in Catalonia, as agreed by Together for Catalonia (Junts) and the governing Socialists (PSOE), Ayuso was "surprised" by the fact that the Spanish government "does it with such joy, considering that Pedro Sánchez said that Junts were xenophobic, something that no one is surprised about when they say that Spaniards are first or second class depending on where they were born". "We are a single nation, it's all very well to distribute powers a la carte and to cut Spain into pieces", she proclaimed. She added that "immigration cannot be parcelled out in any way" and asserted that the European Union should "take action on this issue".
Finally, on the proposal to make it easier for companies that changed their business addresses after 2017 to return to Catalonia, she denounced that "businesspeople cannot be transported as if they were merchandise because they are people, with families behind them" and she underlined all of these responses with the observation that, in the negotiation between the Spanish government and ERC and Junts, "every day independentism wins and Spain dies".