Ángel Collado
The PP is beginning to recognise that it will not have the necessary support for Alberto Núñez Feijóo to be invested head of the Executive and is preparing to stop – also with complaints in the European institutions – the payment of the first bill that Sánchez is willing to pay to the Catalan independence supporters in exchange for remaining in power: a general amnesty for their leaders and activists involved in the secessionist attempt of 1 October 2017.
The Catalan separatists, the ultra-left Republican ERC and the formation of the fugitive ex-president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, take it for granted that they will obtain their “amnesty law” for all those who promoted and were involved in the attempted coup six years ago.
Sánchez endorses with his silence the calculations of his partners, who have grown to realise the PSOE’s radical change of opinion on the matter (until July it was clear that amnesty did not fit in the Constitution), and even the attempts of the governmental media to make it digestible to their bases.
The commitment or the advances of the socialist leader in the negotiation with Puigdemont force Feijóo to improvise a kind of preventive, social and political mobilisation, which will lead him this week to raise with business and trade union organisations the danger of destabilisation posed by the auction of the constitutional framework.
The appointments of the PP president were planned to present his investiture project to the social agents, but now they will have to include the reminder that the alternative to Feijóo (Sánchez and his left-wing front plus the separatists) can be based on what the candidate describes as an “agreement of impunity for independence”.
For next Sunday, the Popular Party has called a rally in the centre of Madrid against Sánchez’s negotiations on this amnesty, which, across the political spectrum, except for the current PSOE leadership and its allies, is considered to go against the constitutional framework, the democratic transition and the independence of the judiciary.
On one side are the entire centre right and the PSOE veterans with Felipe González at the head, who cry out in alarm against a measure that questions Spanish democracy. On the other side are the extreme left (Sumar and Podemos) and the separatist groups that are celebrating it as a first step towards ending “the regime of 78” and moving towards their projects of independent or “plurinational” republics.
In the event that Sánchez goes ahead in order to secure the seven votes of Puigdemont’s party, the PP warns that it will appeal to the European Union. There is the precedent of Romania in 2019, when Jean-Claude Juncker presided over the Commission and stopped an amnesty attempt for corruption cases in that country after complaints from the opposition.
The Popular Party’s political denunciation in Brussels also prevented Pedro Sánchez from taking direct control of the judges’ governing body, the General Council of the Judiciary, three years ago. PSOE and Podemos were trying to lower the voting threshold in Las Cortes to elect the 12 members of the CGPJ from three-fifths to an absolute majority.
The bill was intended to replicate the government’s parliamentary majorities. After protests from the PP, the Commission called Sánchez to account, reminded him that he should first consult with all sectors concerned and invoked the role of the Council of Europe’s body, the Venice Commission, which monitors respect for constitutional law. The PSOE had to give up its plans and withdrew the project in April 2021.
The European People’s Party, the largest group in the European Parliament and with Spain’s Dolors Montserrat as vice-president, will once again be the first body to mobilise the PP to denounce Sánchez’s new manoeuvres that call into question the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary in Spain.
Vox, for its part, has anticipated events by writing to the president of the Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, of the same EPP, to warn of plans to grant amnesty to convicted secessionists or those awaiting trial.
Sánchez is now negotiating favours for Catalan secessionists that are ultimately out of his hands, no matter how left-wing and sympathetic the current Constitutional Court presided over by Cándido Conde Pumpido may be, and even if he achieves the goal of being re-elected president of the government with the 7 seats of Puigdemont’s party.
