Simon Hunter
THE SPANISH central government has slammed the leader of the main opposition Popular Party (PP), Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, after he held a meeting with conservative public prosecutors and pledged to repeal a series of new laws should he become prime minister at the upcoming general elections.
The meeting, which took place on April 18 with members of the Spanish Prosecutors’ Association, was described on Tuesday by the minister for the presidency, Felix Bolaños, as a ‘very serious matter’.
The minister claimed that the PP was ‘manoeuvring in the shadows’ with a sector of the judiciary in a bid to ‘roll back Spain by a decade’, in comments that were reported by Spanish daily El Pais.
For his part, however, Feijoo claimed that his meeting was ‘completely above board and institutional’, adding that he had a profound belief ‘in the independence of prosecutors’.
At the meeting, however, several public prosecutors expressed their support for the PP’s policies and also criticised laws that have been passed by the current government, a coalition of the Socialist Party and leftist Unidas Podemos.
The current government has passed a series of laws in recent months that have proved to be controversial, covering issues such as abortion, trans rights and sexual consent. In the latter case, an oversight has seen some sex offenders either released early from prison or have their sentences reduced, something that has prompted harsh criticism from opposition parties such as the PP.
‘They are going to repeal everything if they get into power,’ said the leader of the leftist Podemos party, Ione Belarra, who is also social rights minister. ‘They will tear down all of the advances of this government, everything that has taken us so much effort to build,’ she added, in comments reported by El Pais.
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