The Diplomat
The two partners of the coalition government, PSOE and Sumar, have clashed again over their differences in international politics, in this case due to complaints about the formation of Vice President Yolanda Díaz (and the former coalition partner, Podemos) by the alleged arrival in Spain of a ship supposedly loaded with weapons for Israel. The socialist part of the Executive has assured that the ship, which has finally decided to dock elsewhere, was not heading to Israel and has accused both parties of spreading “hoaxes.”
It all started this past Wednesday, when Sumar and Podemos denounced (based on information from the NGO Rescop supporting Palestine) that a ship, the ‘Borkum’, was preparing to stop at the port of Cartagena with a shipment of weapons. destined for Israel. “If she is loaded with tons of weapons for the genocide in Palestine, she cannot dock in Cartagena. We have time to stop it,” declared Sumar spokesperson, Iñigo Errejón.
Under these circumstances, Podemos filed a complaint with the National Court asking that the ship be detained and inspected (the complaint was filed yesterday by Judge Ismael Moreno) and Sumar asked the State Attorney General’s Office to block the ship and its cargo to prevent the arrival of weapons to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Army.
On the same Thursday, the Ministry of Transport, headed by the socialist Óscar Puente, assured the newspaper ABC that the Port Authority had authorized the arrival of this ship, from Gran Canaria, because it had “all the documentation in order” and specified that the ship “in no case is headed to Israel.” Likewise, the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, assured on Thursday that her Department had made “all the necessary inquiries” and had verified that the ‘Borkum’ was traveling in “legal conditions” and was not heading to Israel, but “to another country.” of the EU.” Robles also specified that she had conveyed this the day before to the leader of Podemos, Ione Belarra.
For their part, sources from Moncloa indicated that the ‘Borkum’ is a ship with the flag of Antigua and Barbuda and a German owner, that its documentation was in order and that its final destination was the Czech Republic with merchandise for the Army. from this country. The ‘Borkum’, as the newspaper El Mundo has learned, was transporting ammunition for a type of Soviet weaponry that Israel does not have and, therefore, everything indicates that its destination was Ukraine, within the framework of the Czech initiative for the massive purchase on international markets of artillery howitzers needed by the Ukrainian military.
Óscar Puente himself published on Thursday, through X, that the ship that was transporting weapons to Israel was the ‘Marianne Danica’, which “arrived on the 21st of this month” in Cartagena, “and has been denied a stopover by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” Indeed, on Thursday the Ministry of Foreign Affairs prohibited the ‘Marianne Danica’ from stopping in Spain, a decision “coherent” with Spain’s position of not granting new licenses for the export of war material to this country, as declared in Brussels. the minister, José Manuel Albares.
Despite all this, a Podemos MP, Javier Sánchez Serna, went to the port of Cartagena on Thursday afternoon “to check, first-hand, the situation of the Borkum ship, suspected of carrying weapons to Israel for genocide,” according to declared Ione Belarra on social networks.
Podemos’s insistence was harshly criticized by Puente: “They are on the wrong boat. They got the date wrong. They accuse us of being genocidal. They go to court without the slightest evidence and without the slightest rigor. They do not rectify. They don’t apologize. They continue with the hoaxes and accusations,” he added. For her part, the second vice president of the Government and number two of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero, has accused Podemos and Sumar of generating “hoaxes.”
Finally, the ship has decided not to dock in Cartagena and stop in Slovenia. Despite all this information, both Sumar and Podemos (in this case, the former minister and candidate for the European elections, Irene Montero) have celebrated that the ship has not docked in Spain and have assured that this change of course has been possible thanks to the pressure of society. “If the ‘Borkum’ has nothing to hide, why does she finally decide at dawn not to dock in the port of Cartagena and follow her route?” Errejón wrote. For her part, Belarra told TVE that the fact that the freighter has decided not to dock in Cartagena shows that “the suspicions were more than reasonable.”
