Despite the sparks that flew from the parliamentary clash between the Spanish foreign affairs minister, Josep Borrell, and Esquerra Republicana (ERC) deputy Gabriel Rufián, we wouldn't be talking about it if it weren't for two circumstances secondary to the debate. The first, the expulsion from the hemicycle of the ERC deputy by the Congress' speaker, Ana Pastor; and the second, the minister's accusation that an ERC deputy had spat at him. It's true that Rufián angrily protested Borrell's speech, the latter having described his contributions as "a mix of sawdust and manure, the only thing he's able to produce" to applause from a large share of the chamber. From that point to expulsion being the appropriate measure is quite the jump, since the speaker never tends to go that far. When you count back over the cases where a similar disciplinary measure has been taken, you have fingers left over on your hand.
Things could have ended there, but that wasn't enough for Borrell. He had to raise the level of the confrontation and did so. Rufián's colleagues from his party left the hemicycle with him and the minister, as one of them passed in front of them, reacted as if he'd spat at him. That's what he showed with his gestures and that's what he stated outside the hemicycle. What's certain is that only he saw it and, of the dozens of photographers there were in the Congress at that time, and who didn't miss a detail, none, I repeat: none of them have validated his version. More than that, all of them who have spoken about it on social media have said that it wasn't true and that they haven't found anything going back over their archives. It was fake news, something the minister has got us accustomed to, but also it was something far more serious. A lie in the parliament itself.
The fact that it's not the first time doesn't make it any less serious. It's true that Borrell enjoys a kind of parliamentary dispensation since, as well as the support of the deputies of his parliamentary group, PSOE, he escapes unharmed from criticism with the support of both Ciudadanos and PP. The clearest example was the condemnation there was in the chamber over the use of privileged information in the sale of Abengoa stocks by someone close to him, while he was a member of the company's board. The three groups buried the scandal in unison, a situation which hasn't been seen, logically, with other ministers.
He lied in that case, he's lied in the explanations he's given abroad over the events of the 1st October last year, he's lied when it comes to talking about the police violence, he's laughed about the imprisonment of the Catalan political prisoners, he's joked about Oriol Junqueras' mental architecture... On this occasion, however, he's lied and they've caught him in flagrante delicto. Even his parliamentary group felt uncomfortable about the invention of a spitting incident which didn't happen. In any similar country he couldn't stay on as a minister for such a serious accusation against a deputy. Here, it doesn't matter. With some people, nothing ever matters.