The PP takes the sit-in of Robles, Albares and Marlaska in the Senate due to the Ceuta crisis to the Constitutional Court

At the end of August, Margarita Robles (Minister of Defense), José Manuel Albares (Exterior) and Fernando Grande-Marlaska (Interior) left their chair empty in the Senate commission to which each one had been summoned to explain their management of the crisis in Ceuta. The PP, with an absolute majority in the Upper House, has already responded politically to this sit-in by announcing the disapproval of the three members of the Government - something that will materialize in this week's plenary session. And, now, he is preparing to censure the actions of the ministers also through judicial means, before the Constitutional Court.

The popular ones bring to the parliamentary session this Wednesday a new conflict of powers for the constitutional court to resolve the "absences" of Robles, Albares and Marlaska in the Senate. In the opinion of Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party, which has already announced that it would also take the "non-appearances" before the Supreme Court, these sit-ins at the Senate represent a "trampling" of the law.

"The empty chairs of the ministers cannot go unpunished, and we will continue to take the Government's decision to hide from the Senate and flee from the Spaniards to court," said the popular spokesperson in the Upper House, Alicia García, in statements sent to the media in which she calls what happened a "genuine shame."

The ministers justified their absence in the Senate when, days later, they appeared in Congress under the same backdrop. However, this argument does not convince the PP, which discredits the three Government officials who offer the explanations "that suit them, on the date that suits them and under the conditions that suit them."

"The Government cannot unilaterally choose which Chamber controls it, when it appears or under what conditions it does so," García protests, recalling that the summons to give explanations in the Senate "is not an invitation", but rather "a constitutional and parliamentary obligation."

The Regulations of the Upper House establish that the members of the Government "are obliged to appear before the commissions and their bodies" in accordance with the provisions of two articles of the Constitution: 76 and 110. The first refers to the regulations for the investigation commissions, while the second, more general, establishes that "the Chambers and their commissions may demand the presence of the members of the Government." The PP clings to all this to now go to the Constitutional Court seeking censure of the ministers' sit-in.