Fernando Grande-Marlaska denied today on his arrival at the Congress that the rapprochement of the Catalan political prisoners is the payment of some kind of «toll» to the independentistas for their support of the motion of censure that led Pedro Sánchez to the Moncloa.
The head of the Interior Department, who is ultimately responsible for the decision to transfer the nine leaders of the process, has stated that the government has simply «strictly complied with the law», which states that prisoners must be held in centres close to their places of residence. In this regard, he stressed that the Catalan prisoners met the requirements for transfer, in particular that the judicial investigation had been «concluded» and the «approval» of the judge in the case, the Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena, in the sense that he «did not need the physical presence of those under investigation» in Madrid.