Every day, a new step on his complex path to investiture. The acting President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, pronounced the word “amnesty” this Friday, for the first time in public. Although it is the key to being able to close an agreement with Junts and ERC, essential to achieve his re-election, Sánchez had carefully avoided saying it until now. And today he did it, precisely, in the presence of the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, at the end of the informal meeting of the community club in Granada.
“We know Sumar’s proposal, as we also know the proposal of other political parties in relation to the amnesty,” Sánchez stressed, regarding the initiative promoted by Yolanda Díaz, but also by the pro-independence groups. “It is still a way of trying to overcome the judicial consequences of the situation that Spain experienced with one of the worst territorial crises in the history of democracy in 2017,” acknowledged the leader of the PSOE.
In any case, Sánchez has warned, as the acting Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, has also done this morning, that the proposal promoted by Sumar “is not the position of the PSOE.”
But he has insisted on his determination to face “a royal investiture”, to fulfill the King’s mandate and the mandate of the Spanish people at the polls, as opposed to the failed investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo. “The Spaniards have spoken, they have told us what the parliamentary representation of each and every one of the groups is,” he alleged. And he has thus insisted that “the duty of all parties is to try to work to understand each other and achieve a government in Spain as soon as possible.” “And that’s what I’m doing,” he said.
Sánchez, however, has indicated that he still cannot explain the scope of his possible agreement with the Catalan independence movement. “I cannot anticipate an agreement until that agreement occurs, because we are in full negotiation,” he alleged. “What I can guarantee to the Spanish people is that it will be an agreement, when it occurs, that will be absolutely transparent and public, and that the objective is very simple: do what we have been doing over the last five years, policies of progress and of coexistence, within the framework of the Constitution,” he stressed.
“The agreements will be known when those agreements are finalized. That is, there will be no agreement until everything is agreed. “It’s that simple,” he remarked. “It’s pure common sense,” Sánchez concluded.
The leader of the PSOE has also not ruled out that, in this process of conversations to try to articulate a majority of investiture and legislature, a member of his negotiating team could hold a meeting with the former president of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, who is on the run from justice. Spanish in Belgium since 2017. “We are in the negotiation process. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” he noted. And he has described it as “logical” that, at this time, he is negotiating with the parliamentary groups “so that there is a royal investiture and to comply with the mandate of the Spanish people.” “And that’s what I’m going to do,” he concluded.
“No one in Spain can argue that today the situation in Catalonia is infinitely better than in 2017, and there are the electoral results,” he highlighted after the approval of the pardons for the imprisoned leaders of the process in the previous legislature. An initially very controversial decision as well, but which, in the opinion of the socialists, was ratified by the citizens when the PSOE added a million more votes in the general elections on July 23, in relation to the last appointment with the polls of the 2019.
Sánchez has insisted that all agreements reached with the Catalan independence groups will be within the framework of the Constitution, and will also be validated by the legislative power, with a majority in Congress. “And even if they want to be appealed to the Constitutional Court by the opposition, they will also be validated by the Constitutional Court,” he assured. “Complete democratic normality,” he assured.
