It may, as Pedro Sánchez says, that the unity of the independence movement is broken. The process may even be buried. And maybe even Catalonia is pacified. But there is no doubt that secessionism has returned to the epicenter of public debate. Because judicial times are not the same as those of politics. Because the consequences of the repeal of the crime of sedition and the revision of the embezzlement are not immediate. Because the independence movement has its own road map. Because the legislator proposes and the courts dispose. And, above all, because we are at the gates of a long electoral campaign with which each one tries to bring the ember to the sardine that suits them best. The judges, too.
For all these reasons, the Catalan agenda has crossed the strategy with which Pedro Sánchez intended to start the new political course and extend the framework of economic recovery, employment and social protection measures until the municipal and regional elections in May. Nothing to worry about in the sphere of the coalition, where every day they are more convinced that in Catalonia they have done what they had to do and that the debate on the revision of the crimes of sedition and embezzlement will be diluted over time, as happened with the granting of pardons.
Until then, the penal reform approved by the Government to benefit the leaders of the process convicted after 1-O has already had a first consequence in the courts with the decision of the Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena to withdraw the crime of sedition from the Euro-order against Carles Puigdemont, replace it with that of disobedience and maintain that of embezzlement, defending that he acted for profit. Contrary to what was expected by those around the former president of the Generalitat, the instructor’s latest move has put his retirement in Belgium at risk, removed the possibility of his voluntary return to Spain and dissipated the idea of a reduction in sentences that release him from provisional prison. And it is that the order attributes to him a type of aggravated embezzlement that implies severe prison sentences and increases the chances that he will be handed over by the authorities of any European country.
With all of this, we are witnessing a new exaltation of secessionism that, far from diluting the Catalan agenda, places it once again at the center of the political tableau. Exactly the opposite effect to that intended by Sánchez by precipitating the penal reform and finalizing it before Christmas with the intention of moving it away in the run-up to the campaign. With everything, in La Moncloa they defend: one, that with or without reform of the Penal Code, “Catalonia was always on all the electoral agendas”; two, that “the independence movement no longer has more gasoline than that of victimhood”; three, that “today it is more feasible than ever for Puigdemont to answer before the Spanish Justice” and four, that although the PP tries to instrumentalize this issue in the rest of Spain, the Socialists continue to believe that their commitment to deinflammation and de-judicialization will give them revenue in a community that is essential for them to achieve a good result both in municipal and general terms and in which they have managed to significantly improve coexistence.
A Monclovite plumber sums it up as follows: “Although the blame for what happened in 2017 lay with the independence movement, PP and Vox are the same as procés and the PSOE is the solution to it.” In the environment of the president, they brandish a recent survey by the ICPS (Institute of Political and Social Sciences) to emphasize that today the procés has ceased to be a problem among Catalans and that, even among more than 40% of supporters of independence , it is recognized that it will end up buried.
Despite the enormous political and media outcry raised first with the pardons and then with the reform of the Penal Code, the president always defended that we had to wait for the storm to subside to see the calming effects of a decision that, on the other hand, was not I thought it was among the citizen concerns. Sánchez preferred to put up with the downpour for a couple of weeks before the end of the year and then open 2023 with a strictly economic framework on GDP growth, price control, the revaluation of pensions or the evolution of employment. And thus value the effects of the social protection measures deployed by the Executive and expose the prophets of an economic apocalypse with which Feijóo hoped to fly to La Moncloa.
None of that has happened, so far. And not because the economic data have worsened, which is not the case, but because the right has taken advantage of Llarena’s car to once again shake up the scarecrow of the breakup of Spain and the “submission” of Sánchez to a pro-independence movement that is now calling for the acquittal of all defendants. The extreme noise of the right which, in the words of the socialists “seems to feel nostalgic for the Catalonia of 2017”, has served for those of Feijóo to recover Casado’s most fiery speech while the PSOE has taken advantage of the controversy over abortion in Castilla y León to resurrect the fear of Vox.
The PP and the red carpet for Puigdemont
The Government’s forecast was that, once the sedition was repealed, Llarena would automatically charge Puigdemont with the new crime of aggravated public disorder, punishable by five years in prison and up to eight years of disqualification to equate his situation with those who have already been pardoned, but the The Supreme Court judge has chosen, without listening to the parties, to maintain the embezzlement in the aggravated version, which would ensure the imprisonment of the former president. And even so, for the popular all this means “laying a red carpet” for the former leader of Junts per Catalunya to return to Spain, a framework identical to the one that Vox intends to impose on a president of the Government thanks to which “the coup plotters will be able to walk by Spain without punishment.
The right and the extreme right forget that Puigdemont could not, among other reasons, be tried in Spain because the crime of sedition that he was accused of had no equal in the Belgian Justice, which therefore rejected several extradition requests issued by Llarena. And the Socialists try in any case to dismantle the arguments of the opposition with the reminder that the independence movement held two illegal consultations and declared the independence of Catalonia with a PP government, which was also the one that Puigdemont also fled.
Today, no one rules out that the former president could finally be extradited by the Belgian courts and that Sánchez is capable of turning his submission to the Spanish Justice into a supervening interpretation of compliance with his word. It was during an electoral debate on 10-N in 2019 in which he reproached Pablo Casado for going with a PP government with which the former president left the country and solemnly blurted out: “Puigdemont escaped from you and I commit myself today and here to bring him back to Spain and make him accountable ”. If this happened, we would have the umpteenth unexpected twist of the script. A socialist minister is sure that “time will not only prove us right, but that the review of the indictments that are derived now, after the entry into force of the reform, will come immediately.” The forecast is that it will not be beyond the end of February or the beginning of March and that the matter will not reach the electoral campaign of the municipal and autonomous communities alive. “This is an issue that people will see further and further away,” adds the same interlocutor, for whom elections are not won, as the PP claims, with criticism of a reform of the Penal Code.
Nostalgia for a worse time
Without going into the assessment of Llarena’s order, which goes so far as to write that the repeal of sedition poses a context “close to decriminalization”, the deputy secretary general of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero, also did not want to answer whether the judge’s letter was is or is not far from the claims of ERC, which is ultimately who the Government decided to face the reform of the Penal Code and who hopes that dozens of charges of its formation, pending trial, will not end up in prison, after the new classification penal. The list includes those who have already been tried, those who have fled justice and a long list of former second-rate political and technical officials who are awaiting trial or are still being investigated. The improvement is not linear and each case can end up being a world, and more after the interpretation that Llarena has made this week of the reform of embezzlement and the crime of public disorder.
If the reform finally did not serve the purpose that ERC sought, for the Republicans and also for those of Puigdemont there would be no other axis of campaign than that of the referendum, independence and the supposed repression of the State, which would completely blow up the story of the pacification of Catalonia achieved by Sánchez’s policies. Until May, everything is possible.
