Ábalos assures that Pedro Sánchez and Otegi met in a hamlet: “That interview existed” | Spain

José Luis Ábalos admitted in recent days, from his home in Valencia, that he is “afraid” of being able to go to prison this Thursday if the Supreme Court modifies, at the request of some parties, the precautionary measures that have been applied to him and this Wednesday he decided to make a move. The former minister, former secretary of the Organization and former number two of the PSOE published a tweet in which he assures that “personal sources” told him that “it is true” that the current president of the government, Pedro Sánchez, met in 2018 with the leader of EH Bildu, Arnaldo Otegi, to address the negotiations of the motion of censure that led to the departure of the former popular president Mariano Rajoy from La Moncloa. Both President Sánchez and Otegi have categorically denied this quote. This Thursday, Ábalos risks the possibility of the judge ordering his imprisonment.

The current deputy José Luis Ábalos, now a member of the Mixed Group of the Congress after being expelled from the Socialist Party when his case broke out with the UCO reports, published a tweet on his Twitter social network account in which he validates the version that his former advisor, Koldo García, has been ratifying for several days, according to which in May 2018 President Sánchez saw Otegi. The tweet literally says: “On the meeting of President Pedro Sánchez, Santos Cerdán and Arnaldo Otegui in 2018 in a fraction to negotiate the motion of censure against Rajoy, I can only say what sources told me in person, and that is that that interview existed.”

Ábalos, who has just set foot in Congress and who has recorded only 16 written questions to the Government in these two years of legislature, on Tuesday recorded two more in which he asks the Executive, and in particular his successor at the Ministry of Transport, for clarification on alleged maneuvers and irregular assignments in the port of Valencia, which depends on this department.

The information about that alleged appointment was published last weekend by the digital newspaper El Español and subsequently confirmed by Koldo García himself, who on Thursday also faces the possibility that the Supreme Court will change its precautionary measures and he could end the day in prison. Over the past weekend, both sources from La Moncloa, as well as President Sánchez himself in a public appearance and other officials of the executive branch denied this information, classifying it as “absolutely false”.

The leader of EH Bildu, Arnaldo Otegi, also came out publicly this Monday to deny that meeting and went so far as to claim that he had never been or spoken to Sánchez: “It is categorical and absolutely false that that meeting existed. It is an invention and fake news of the reactionary bloc.” Otegi went further and linked that news with others published at the time on the 2004 Atoche attacks which some media and parties attributed to ETA. The Abertzale leader added: “The 11M lied to win the elections and today they lie openly again to try to get to the government.”

The first vice president and deputy general secretary of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero, also denied this Wednesday, leaving the control session to the Congress government, the veracity of this information and referred to the denials, but also alluded to the fact that she does not understand now that her former colleague, with whom she once admitted having excellent relations, now wants to join those who want to harass President Sánchez by not telling the truth and put these comments by Ábalos in his anti-visilla defense strategy before the Supreme Court this Thursday.

The PP did not take long to take advantage of Ábalos’ words to attack Sánchez again. His spokesperson in the Senate, Alicia García, concluded that in this way the former minister confirmed “what Sánchez and his men denied and tried to hide. Pedro Sánchez’s disguised pact with Otegi was political but also economic. A humiliation that will always haunt him.”