The Amnesty law, which passed yesterday with 178 votes in favor and which is expected to return to Congress for its final approval, still faces an intense obstacle course in the Senate, where the PP, which has the absolute majority, plans to delay it as much as the regulation allows.
The endorsement of criminal oblivion has been put on the back burner by the irruption on the political map of the Catalan election call and by the relentless dispute between the PSOE and the PP over the corruption plots of the Koldo case and the Ayusogate.
Despite this, there is still no amnesty and the processing of the law will circulate on the calendar in parallel with the electoral campaign in Catalonia, which has stained the future of Pedro Sánchez’s legislature. At the moment, the state budgets have already been loaded and a bitter dispute has opened up within the coalition government between the PSOE and Sumar.
The socialists accuse Yolanda Díaz of not controlling En Comú Podem and of not acting to convince its leader, Jéssica Albiach, to save the accounts of the Government of Pere Aragonès. Ex-mayor Ada Colau is being targeted.
However, at last Sunday’s event organized by the commons in Barcelona, ??when Aragonès began to weigh the real possibility of calling elections, both the harsh statements made by Albiach or Colau and those of the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun. And this is what Aragonès told Yolanda Díaz in the telephone conversation they had on Monday night, in which he reminded her that Urtasun is also Sumar’s spokesman.
It was of no use, the commons consummated their threat the next day and ERC sources explain that on Wednesday, while the amendments were still being fully debated in Parliament, the president drafted the speech in which he would announce the call for elections He asked his collaborators for papers and began to write the argument about the reasons that led him to advance the elections, which hours later he would present in a press conference.
The electoral campaign in Catalonia now opens a path of uncertainty and exceptionalism that will block any government initiative. The republicans disdain the movements of Junts that plan to place Carles Puigdemont as a candidate and consider that their main enemy to beat is Salvador Illa. The good understanding that both ERC and PSC sources maintain that he has prioritized in the negotiations for the accounts will be set aside from today, when the Catalan Socialists begin their ordinary congress.
For now, this Sunday Pedro Sánchez will hold his first pre-electoral rally in Catalonia as part of the PSC congress. An appointment that had been scheduled for months, but now takes on special relevance. Illa and Sánchez have these days held talks about the electoral advance, a scenario that, according to socialist sources, has not worried them at all, since they foresee a good campaign.
Socialists and Republicans arrive at the election campaign with their homework done. The two formations had long ago anointed their candidates. The same does not happen in the rest of the formations.
In Junts, although there are already voices that place Puigdemont, Anna Erra and Josep Rull as the trident to head the list, it is not yet decided. Puigdemont will not speak until next week, but at the party almost everyone assumes that he will appear. Another thing is that he can come back and be present at the investiture plenary, as the former president expressed. The confusing judicial future facing the amnesty could burden this aspiration.
Nor has En Comú Podemos elected Albiach as a candidate. The communes had planned to formalize the candidacy before, but the electoral calendar has been thrown on them and in the coming days they will announce the convocation.
