“No one pays attention to the poor, alone up there.” A socialist MEP thus described the situation of Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí when they landed in the plenary of the European Parliament. Now, the ex-president enjoys from above the “circus” that the PP has set up in its sudden discovery of Europe. It’s a déjà vu with the protagonists reversed. The popular people have rescued the pro-independence terminology in their particular battle against Pedro Sánchez and the amnesty law: “internationalization of the conflict”, “permanent mobilization” and “popular legitimacy”. Even the comparison of Spain with Poland and Hungary. The independentists were referring to the judicial system; now the right and ultra-right extend it to the PSOE Government and its new partners.
Comparing Sánchez with Viktor Orban means: 1. The violation of the independence of some judges despite the fact that their associations make statements against the political pacts of the PSOE, accuse the Junts leader of terrorism in the midst of investiture negotiations, and the prosecutor’s office that demands 27 years in prison for the CDRs. 2. The violation of the freedom of expression of the right-wing press that calls to occupy the streets. 3. The failure to fight corruption that cost Mariano Rajoy the presidency. 4. The violation of the rights of minorities… In Spain “political dissent is persecuted”, asserts Jorge Buxadé, Vox ideologue, and Puigdemont smiles. An extradition of a member of “an identifiable target group” can be refused, the EU’s Court of Justice said. The ex-president clung to this until the PSOE needed him.
Thirty interventions in the Eurochamber – without Puigdemont taking the floor – have succeeded in Europeanizing the Catalan conflict for the Spanish public and burying a decade of PSOE and PP unity in their fight against independence on the international front. Officially, the amnesty law remains an “internal issue” and the control announced by commissioner Didier Reynders will hardly redden Spain more than the successive requests to block the renewal of the General Council of the Judicial Power that has lasted more than five years.
The PP and PSOE governments had dedicated themselves to denying the existence of a Catalan conflict to the neighboring chancelleries. The Ministers of Foreign Affairs were the ministers of the process. José Manuel García-Margallo dismissed Oriol Junqueras with a “you’ll get a monumental cookie”; and Josep Borrell, self-appointed “whip” of the process, confessed to using 80% of his time in the ministry to combat the maneuvers of independence.
Europe has also been the judicial measuring stick since 2017. Those convicted of an unresolved political conflict have sought their second chance in European courts and even the UN; the magistrate of the Supreme Court Manuel Marchena cataloged crimes equivalent to sedition in Germany, France, Italy or Belgium to oppose the pardons; the dissenting magistrates of the previous Constitutional Court replied to the Supreme Court with judgments of the European Court of Human Rights on the right of assembly in Hungary, Russia, Turkey, Romania… And the proposed amnesty law includes cases from Portugal, France or Germany
Now Dolors Montserrat’s “Listen to Europe” – “Listen to Europe Felipe González” – collides with the attack of realism by Puigdemont and Junts after 23- J. The PSOE negotiators have walked around Brussels, Geneva and the south of France. The route will continue. Together, it has recovered the converging pride, being protagonists, the window of Catalonia in Madrid.
All the discrepancies that have not been agreed with the PSOE are possible and there are proposals on the list that may surprise. Where there is no surprise is in Puigdemont’s desire to repeat as a candidate in the European elections of June 2024 with the challenge of returning to the million votes of four years ago. With the socialists pushing for space for independence and the ERC trying to exploit the presidency of the Generalitat, Junts’ victory would be Puigdemont’s European miracle.
