The cessation of Diego Perez de los Cobos It has been the loudest polemic of the Fernando Grande-Marlaska ministry. In fact, the abrupt departure of the general from the Madrid Command has been sustained for practically the entire legislature until yesterday when the Minister of the Interior finally executed the Supreme Court ruling and reinstated him in office after three years of political punishment. The firmness with which Grande-Marlaska showed the colonel the exit door for refusing to give him secret judicial information about the 8-M demonstration that was held at the gates of the pandemic and his resistance to executing the decision of the Supreme Court show that Pérez de los Cobos had become a personal matter for the minister.
The path of no return between the two occurred a year after Pedro Sánchez landed in Moncloa and has continued until now. In these three and a half years, the differences have increased. The colonel has always had the support of the entire Civil Guard, an institution that, on the other hand, has spent the entire legislature censoring the decisions of the minister -apart from the dismissal of Pérez de los Cobos- from behind doors.
In the heart of the Armed Institute, it has been difficult to digest the ways of Grande-Marlaska in many aspects and his management model. There has been no understanding and his position with the colonel’s case has been very present in Guzmán el Bueno, headquarters of the General Directorate of the Benemérita.
After many setbacks and controversies, a broad sector of the Corps understood that with the decision of the Supreme Court the resignation of the minister would come, but this was not the case. Grande-Marlaska resisted and far from giving in, he vindicated himself. The execution of the sentence endows the rigid stance of the minister with a certain domestication. He removed the colonel and it is he who now returns him to his position as head of the Madrid Civil Guard Command. The dismissal has also been very present in the political arena. Always considered by the opposition as a “political cessation”.
The court itself in its ruling reprimanded the minister for “inadmissible interference” in a judicial investigation. The resistance that the Minister of the Interior staged from the first day to comply with the judicial decision has accompanied him until the last moment, as demonstrated by the delay in executing the ruling. Interior had two months to restore the colonel but the time began to count from the moment in which the ruling was effectively notified to the Ministry.