The general secretary of the PP, Miguel Tellado, closed ranks with the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, after her statements on immigration and, in parallel, accused the state attorney general, whom he accuses of having “filled his toga with the mud of Pedro Sánchez’s corruption”. In a press conference in Alcorcón, Tellado supported the regional leader, who on Thursday in the plenary session of the Assembly addressed Vox criticizing his immigration policy: “Someone will have to clean his houses, someone will have to harvest his crops and someone will have to lay the bricks for the houses where we will all live then”, launched Ayuso. When questioned about these words, the general secretary of the PP defended that the president explained “perfectly what she wanted to say”, and insisted that in Spain “there are a million unfilled jobs” and that, therefore, “there is a need for manpower”.
“What we defend is that all immigrants who want to come to develop a life project, to contribute, work and contribute to our economy, have their doors open,” added Tellado, who underlined his party’s position by evoking the immigration plan presented by Alberto Núñez Feijóo in October: “We are not on maximalist positions, nor the open bar policy on illegal immigration that the PSOE defends, nor the Vox policy of immigrants outside.”
The PP plan proposes, among other measures, the creation of a points-based visa for immigrants, conditional on entering the world of work in sectors with a shortage of “manpower” and coming from countries with a “close culture”, such as Hispanic America. With this proposal, the PP seeks not only to tighten arrival requirements, but also regularization and immigrants’ access to public aid and Spanish nationality. Feijóo proposed in his presentation to “raise the level of cultural and linguistic demand” to obtain nationality on the grounds that “it is not given, it is deserved”.
This approach also includes tougher measures against crime, such as automatic expulsion in case of convictions for particularly serious crimes (homicide, murder, sexual violence, terrorism, trafficking or smuggling) or for intentional recidivism in minor crimes. Tellado stressed that the party is “perfectly receptive” to “orderly and regular legal immigration.” “Anyone who wants to come to our country, because life is good here and there are job opportunities, its doors are open. Anyone who wants to come to commit crimes must leave Spain,” he concluded.
About the state attorney general
Tellado accused the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, of wanting to influence the Supreme Court’s decision on the case of the State Attorney General in an interview with EL PAÍS, where he argued that García Ortiz is “innocent”, which the popular interpret as an attempt to “show the way to the judges” and “attack the separation of powers”.
The general secretary of the Popular Party also presented his conclusions on the case, despite criticizing Sánchez for it. “It is clear that if the state attorney general committed a crime, he did it because someone asked him to,” he said. “He who has nothing to hide, does not delete anything, the fact that a state attorney general deletes his WhatsApp and deletes his email is called obstruction of justice,” he said. Tellado joins the position of the prosecution, which sees the deletion of the devices as evidence of guilt. Álvaro García Ortiz, however, justified his claim that he “systematically” deletes all messages and emails from his phone and computer because a leak of his communications could “put in danger many people in this country.”
The PP representative stated that “the Attorney General has stained his robe with mud,” before quoting a statement by Judge Cándido Conde Pumpido, appointed head of the Attorney General’s Office 19 years ago by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. “He literally said that the prosecutors’ robes had to be stained with street dust”, began Tellado, who underlined that he said this “to justify that the Prosecutor’s Office puts itself at the service of the Government”. He used this to argue that García Ortiz “did not stain his toga with the dust of the street, but rather filled his toga with the mud of the corruption of Pedro Sánchez’s government.”
