The Diplomat
The Council of Ministers approved yesterday, finally, the pardon for the nine Catalan leaders sentenced for the independence process, a decision on which the European Commission did not want to pronounce itself because it is an “internal matter of Spain” and which led to a new confrontation between the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, and the Popular Party, in this case in the Senate.
González Laya appeared yesterday in the plenary session of the Senate to answer a question from the PP on “how does the Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation think that the external image of Spain is at the moment after the decision of the President of the Government to pardon the same seditious people for whom foreign aid and collaboration was requested from our European partners”.
In her answer to the question, asked by the PP senator Ana Camins, the minister assured that Spain’s image is “strong, solid, that of an open, democratic and tolerant country, that wants to progress economically and socially, and with today’s decision that image is strengthened”. An example of this, she added, is the support shown by several foreign media for the pardons. “This is the greatness of democracy, that by pardoning within the Law, the State shows its strength, its generosity and its will of concord”, she added.
In her turn, Camins asked her “how is he going to say in Europe that the ruling of all the members of the Supreme Court for sedition was a political sentence, how does he tell them now that in Spain justice is not equal for all or that there is no separation of powers”. According to the PP senator, the Government is “the doormat of all the criminals who in this country trample on democracy” and prefers to “exchange prisoners, whether secessionists or ETA, for months in the Moncloa”.
Before this debate, PP senator Rafael Hernando lashed out at the minister in relation to the resolution approved this past Monday by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which calls for the release of the Catalan leaders prosecuted for the independence process of October 1, 2017 (1-O), as well as the reform of the crime of sedition and the withdrawal of the Euro-orders issued against the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and other leaders fled from Spain.
“What happened yesterday (Monday) at the Council of Europe against Spain is another serious failure of Spanish diplomacy and its minister Arancha González Laya”, Hernando wrote on his Twitter account. “The irrelevance of an incompetent minister”, he added. In her response, also via Twitter, González Laya wrote: “Dear Rafael Hernando, less ‘barking’ and more work”. “You insult your fellow Spanish senators and congressmen in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, who are the ones who have defended the Spanish position”, she added.
The resolution in the Assembly was approved with 70 votes in favor, 28 against and 12 abstentions, despite amendments submitted by the PSOE and PP. Of the twelve Spanish parliamentarians present, five from the PSOE, three from the PP and Vox deputy Iván Espinosa de los Monteros voted against. Besides, Senator Laura Castel (ERC), Deputy Nerea Ahedo (PNV) and Deputy Antón Gómez-Reino (Unidas Podemos) voted in favor.
On the other hand, the spokesman for Justice of the European Commission, Christian Wigand, did not want to pronounce himself yesterday on the pardons decreed by the Government and declared, in a press conference, that “this is an internal matter in Spain that must be dealt with in accordance with its constitutional order, and this also includes the issue of possible pardons”.
