For this Thursday the absolute majority of Congress to make the amnesty law a reality, many other things had to happen first. The most important of all, that the Spanish citizens voted as they did in the general elections of July 23, 2023. That night the polls closed the way for a coalition of the right with the extreme right and glimpsed a conditional alternative majority, among others, for fourteen Catalan independence seats. And the seven from Junts, Carles Puigdemont’s party, had a price set in exchange for joining the equation for Pedro Sánchez’s investiture.
Because the amnesty is many things at the same time but, first of all and in chronological order, it is an independence demand that had been banished by the PSOE until 23J itself. That night, however, the stubborn sums of the electoral count arrived: the coalition of PP and Vox was not enough, nor did Feijóo’s accounts work out in the search for other support that did not also go through the extreme right and the only path that could explore the socialists to revalidate their government forced them to sit at the table with Puigdemont and negotiate their conditions. Either that, or the blockade and the electoral repetition as an extra ball for the right.
So the amnesty went from an independence aspiration banished by the PSOE to becoming a lever for Pedro Sánchez to remain in Moncloa. “Probably, this was not the next step I wanted to take,” the president admitted after his inauguration in an interview on TVE in which he added that, “in politics, as in life, you have to choose between ideal solutions or possible solutions.”
The Socialist Party and the Government as a whole were already committed at that point to conveying the message that criminal pardon for all those prosecuted and convicted in the Catalan process was not only the way to maintain power, but the best way to definitively close the territorial crisis derived from the referendum of October 1, 2017 and the subsequent unilateral declaration of independence by President Puigdemont. “In the name of Spain, in the interest of Spain, in defense of harmony between Spaniards, we are going to grant an amnesty to the people prosecuted during the Catalan process,” Sánchez solemnized during his investiture speech in Congress in defense of the “dialogue, understanding and forgiveness.”
And then the amnesty became the sequel to the pardons or the pacts with Bildu as an element of the inexhaustible list of definitive triggers for the breakup of Spain that the right has proclaimed since ancient times. “The amnesty destroys coexistence, it is the death certificate of the Socialist Party,” Alberto Núñez Feijóo has cried for months, either from the tribune of Congress or in the demonstrations organized by the PP against the Government. Almost temperate criticism when compared to the attacks of the extreme right. “It is the biggest attack against the Constitution since ’78,” said Santiago Abascal in the plenary session last Thursday.
From Vox they have encouraged and participated in harassment marches at socialist headquarters throughout the country, with special emphasis on the PSOE headquarters on Ferraz Street in Madrid, where serious riots and clashes between protesters and the police have occurred. In the plenary session of final approval of the norm, ultra deputies stood up and in a threatening tone shouted and insulted socialist, Sumar and independentist deputies. When the President of the Government cast his vote out loud, several Vox deputies shouted at him as a traitor, and upon leaving the chamber the harassment continued in the hallways, patio or cafeteria of Congress.
In reality, the fire that the extreme right is trying to cause and that aspires to make the right profitable contrasts with the silence that the polls once again placed on the political noise on May 12. That day, and for the first time in democracy, the Catalan independence and nationalist forces were far from a parliamentary majority that they had held until now in a hegemonic manner. The results of the Parliamentary elections revalidated the commitment of the socialists on the path undertaken towards “the reunion” and the end of political exceptionalism. And Salvador Illa, the PSC candidate, won a resounding victory that remains to be seen if it allows him to govern.
The balance is that, a decade after the start of the process, there are no political leaders imprisoned in Catalonia and the application of the amnesty must also put an end to their pending cases. But there are also no horizons for unilateral referendums or declarations of independence because the independence movement has less strength than ever. And that, in addition to the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, is enough for the PSOE and the coalition government to celebrate that the amnesty has been worth it.
Its final approval in the Cortes Generales is not, however, the landing in Ithaca for the Catalan independence supporters from a criminal point of view nor for the Government from a political perspective. The game of criminal pardon will be played in the coming months in the face of a dog on the chessboard of justice, with a large part of the Spanish judicial career expressly positioned against a norm emanating from parliament. And it remains to be seen what influence this will have on the country’s governance.
Because beyond its application, the great unknown is, once again, Carles Puigdemont. The man who went to call regional elections and ended up declaring an independence that he suspended seconds later and later fled Spain, continues to have the upper hand in the legislature with his seven deputies in Congress. And one of his trusted men, Toni Comín, suggested this Friday that if Pedro Sánchez wants stability in the Moncloa, he should consider making Puigdemont president of the Generalitat with the votes of the PSC, a scenario that the socialists flatly rule out.
The question is whether in a hypothesis of opposition in Catalonia and with the amnesty already validated in Congress, Puigdemont will retain his incentives to keep Pedro Sánchez’s legislature standing for a long or short time. If he kept his word, the Junts leader would abandon “active politics,” as he announced during the campaign that he would do if he were not sworn in as president, and would give way to a renewal of leadership in his own party.
And that is where the Government has its sights set. With the governability of Catalonia yet to be finalized and with the legislature without budgets and on standby, few in the president’s team dare to predict what even the short term will bring. Among other things, because there is always a flying goal around the corner. And, after the Rubicon of the amnesty, the next one will be that of 9J, the hand-to-hand fight with the PP for the European elections.
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