2023-10-17 07:27:38
The general director of Legal Security and Public Faith of the Ministry of Justice, Sofía Puente, responsible for the instruction that made an interpretation beyond what was stipulated by the Democratic Memory Law to expand the beneficiaries of Spanish nationality, assumes its authorship in response to a resolution of the Transparency and Good Government Council (CTBG). According to Puente, “there is no record of the instruction beyond the instruction itself,” and “nor is any type of legal report necessary for the drafting of an instruction,” referring in this case to the “definition of instruction” that appears. in article 6 of the Public Sector Legal Regime law that Transparency mentions in its written warning at the request of a citizen, lawyer Guillermo Rocafort.
The instruction was published at the end of October 2022 but the circulars that were issued to the consulates to detail the procedure for the management of all nationality applications have never seen the light, despite the fact that the CTGB has also claimed them from Justice, which denied them on the grounds that they contained “ancillary and confidential information.”
In her response, the sister of the socialist deputy Óscar Puente also acknowledges that there are no minutes of the meetings held by Pilar Llop’s ministry with the groups of Spaniards abroad. Thus, Sofía Puente assures that her General Directorate “did not take any minutes of the meeting held” with the Center for Descendants of United Spaniards (Cedeu), “nor did it take any minutes of the meetings that the general director of Legal Security and Public Faith held with other groups, institutions or individuals.
According to this document, to which LA RAZÓN has had access and signed by Puente herself, “the communications or meetings between the general director of Legal Security and the Subdirectorates or Units that have collaborated in the drafting of the instruction, are considered, as is logical , of an auxiliary or support nature, without this Management Center having much more argument in this regard.
For Rocafort, it is significant that Puente recognizes that there are no minutes of the meetings held with the groups “in which the pressures that led to his instruction were exerted, by which the granting of Spanish nationality was extended far beyond what was established by the Democratic Memory Law, establishing a false and electoralist legal presumption by which all people who left Spain before 1955 were exiles from the Spanish Civil War. In the lawyer’s opinion, “this shows that there is a space of secrecy in this area of massive nationalizations where things have been done so that there is no light or stenographers, resolving issues that affect electoral integrity without scrutiny of the public function ».
Rocafort is “very struck by the touch of reproach in Sofía Puente’s response in this regard to the Transparency Council, when precisely this organization makes it clear that it does not know if said minutes exist because it was precisely the Ministry of Justice who did not clarify it during the processing of the claim file” of the CTBG itself. In her opinion, “it is evident that Puente knows what was discussed in those meetings with Spanish groups abroad, but she prefers that it not appear in any place or document.”
On the other hand, the general director of Legal Security “acknowledges that there is no administrative file on the instruction that she approved, nor any legal report that supports it,” which in the lawyer’s opinion would be “an irregularity because in her instructions, as norms of general provisions, several legal reports would be necessary, both on legality and economic impact”, since Sofía Puente “is going beyond the frameworks of the Historical Memory Law with its instruction, including its ministerial reports and cost forecasts budgets.
For this reason, the lawyer assures that the aforementioned “has skipped all controls, illegally developing with a rule of very low hierarchical rank matters that are more of the Law itself or its implementing regulations.” Furthermore, in his allegations prior to the Transparency Council’s resolution, Puente explained that “this documentation was inadmissible because it was auxiliary information and now he alleges that what did appear to exist does not exist. “It would have been easier to say that there was no such documentation.”
But “precisely the CTGB itself has highlighted that it would be public information because it affects a plurality of people and would therefore be part of an administrative file for the elaboration of a rule on which the constitutional right to transparency must be applied.” and to public scrutiny,” says the interested party.
In any case, “it is evident that with her dull and elusive response, Sofía Puente accepts her sole responsibility,” so “right now,” both the lawyer and other associations of which she is a director “will consider pursuing criminal actions against the aforementioned for the confession that his writing represents in itself.
Last May, the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) rejected an appeal against the investigation by the Association for Reconciliation and Historical Truth “due to lack of active legitimacy” of the entity, which appealed against this decision.
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