The leader of the opposition in Catalonia and of the PSC, Salvador Illa, claimed yesterday the “fundamental contribution” that his party has had to overcome the independence process, which he defined as “ten lost years, very bad for Catalonia and for the whole of Spain”, which the Catalan socialists have helped to leave behind, he said, thanks to measures such as pardons or the Amnesty law.
In his first speech at the party’s XV ordinary congress, yesterday, at the Palau de Congressos de Catalunya, Illa assured that “the PSC, me and Catalonia, are ready to open a new stage” that leaves behind the successive pro-independence governments, a company in which the Government of Pedro Sánchez also has high hopes.
The leader, who today will be re-elected first secretary of the PSC and candidate for the Catalan elections on May 12, was accompanied at the opening of this congress, which will last the whole weekend, by the former president of the Spanish government José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who is currently one of the main political leaders of the PSOE and a recurring figure in electoral campaigns.
Illa presented the management report of his time at the head of the formation, since he took the reins in December 2021, a period in which the PSC has become the first party in Catalonia after winning all the electoral contests – the Catalan elections of 2021, the municipal elections of May 2023 and the general elections of July of the same year. But above all, a period in which the PSC has not only dedicated itself to opposing the ERC Government, but to “building a solid, consistent, viable, realistic, ambitious and hopeful alternative”, remarked the socialist leader.
In this task, Illa said that he had succeeded in making the PSC a serious alternative to “ten lost years, of going around the same idea, of going back and forth to end up in the same place, co-starred by ERC and Junts with four presidents”, and which in his opinion leave a “devastating” balance sheet in areas such as education, renewable energy and infrastructure.
In view of this management, the socialist leader claimed the fundamental contribution of his party to overcome this stage with people such as ex-president Zapatero and the president of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, and who have had as a driving force the “generosity”, the “courage ” and “conviction”, and not the electoral calculator, he assured.
Illa was thus referring to the pardons and the recently approved Amnesty law, which he justified because “neither Catalonia nor Spain deserve to be paralyzed or stoned in 2017”. And in this fiery defense he agreed with Zapatero, who pointed out that the rule represents “the best spirit of the Constitution: concord and reconciliation”, he pointed out, and that, in his opinion, it will mark, “a before and an after ” and will be “one of the laws that will go down in history” in Spain.
The former Spanish president rejected the idea that criminal law can replace politics, because “the more criminal law, the longer it will take politics to achieve the goals of democracy”, he warned. But he also criticized “the journey to nowhere of independence” and warned that “we don’t want heroes or martyrs”, referring to former president Puigdemont.
As passionate was Zapatero’s defense of amnesty as his conviction in the victory at the polls of Illa, an “authentic, solid, credible and winning” leader, he said, predicting that he will win “the most important events of the last 25 years in Catalonia and Spain”.
