PP deputy Ana Vázquez is expelled from Congress after showing a canister of pepper spray

The PP deputy Ana Vázquez has left the plenary session of the Congress of Deputies to the applause of the majority of the popular bench after two calls to order from the president of the lower house, Francina Armengol, who has forced the parliamentarian to deposit outside the chamber a canister of pepper spray that she has shown during the control session.

“This cannot be raised in the house of the people's sovereignty and in the house of democracy,” Armengol expressed amid Vázquez's protests. The popular deputy showed the spray at the moment when she was asking a question to the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska: "This is the symbol of the lack of freedoms that Ceuta women suffer. This is the basic school material, Mr. Marlaska, a pepper spray; Mr. Marlaska, is this the new normal that Ceuta people have to get used to?", Vázquez questioned.

After the incident inside the chamber, the National Police sealed off two bathrooms and a kitchen in the Lower House after a worker began to feel unwell after inhaling some type of substance of unknown origin. The affected area is located on the ground floor of expansion II, at number 36 Carrera de San Jerónimo.

The president of Congress has asked the parliamentarian to leave the chamber and deposit the pepper spray canister outside, after Armengol considered that it was a weapon. “What we would not allow anyone to do in this house cannot be done by a deputy who has to represent them,” said Armengol, who made reference during the second call for order to article 106 of the Congress Regulations, which indicates that “any person who, in the parliamentary chamber, in session or outside of it and whether or not he was a member of the Chamber, promotes serious disorder with his conduct in deed or word, will be immediately expelled.” Vázquez finally left the chamber to the applause of the PP bench, except for the leader of the opposition, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who shook his head in rejection.

The president of the Popular Party criticized Armengol's decision shortly after the incident: "The president has made a very serious accusation. The one who inflames the debate is Armengol. The only thing Ana Vázquez has done is describe a situation." “They go out to tie,” Feijóo said in an informal conversation with journalists. "Who is degrading the Chamber? The president. You cannot tell a PP deputy that she has a weapon," Feijóo stressed, alleging that then the "women and children of Ceuta would be committing a crime because they carry it in their backpacks. You have to be very undocumented or have very bad faith. The only thing you have done is describe a situation," the leader of the popular party has ruled.

After being reprimanded by the presidency of Congress, Vázquez has shown her rejection of this decision in the halls of the lower house. He has stated that the spray he has shown is not a weapon: "What is (the president of Congress, Francina Armengol) saying, that all women carry weapons in Ceuta? That all children in schools carry weapons in Ceuta?"

Vázquez has assured that the spray can was empty and has pointed out that it is not only in Ceuta that an instrument of this type is carried: "Many women in this country are carrying this in cars, in which we live more insecure than ever and in which there are more sexual assaults than ever."

The deputy has also announced that she is going to take the spray to the police station and that she is going to take measures against the presidency of Congress. “This is a democratic country and I am going to put the voice of the women and girls of Ceuta above all else, even if they throw me out today,” said Vázquez before leaving the halls.