Despite the fact that Pedro Sánchez is absolutely convinced that the Amnesty law will see the light of day, and that he will be able to overcome the misgivings of Junts per Catalunya with a reform of the Criminal Procedure Law (LECrim) to shorten the terms of judicial instructions, at high levels of the Spanish Government and the PSOE admit their uncertainty regarding the position that Carles Puigdemont’s formation will finally adopt.
“It is clear that we will not touch the law”, they emphasize to the Central Executive regarding the amnesty for those accused of the process, despite the demands of Junts, who already slowed down the processing of the rule last week in Congress. At the same time, these government sources recognize the complexity of tackling a reform of the Criminal Code still to be defined: “It’s complicated”, they admit.
After Sánchez himself opened the door to a revision of LECrim on Monday, in an attempt to attract Junts to the amnesty agreement, the spokeswoman for the Spanish Government, Pilar Alegría, confirmed yesterday from Moncloa that this project “is on the table”, although it led the negotiation to the level of parliamentary groups and political parties.
In the Executive of Pedro Sánchez, however, they admit that it is “complicated” to address this legislative reform, because they defend that “an appropriate balance must be maintained” between judges and prosecutors to be able to have enough time to address “complex” investigations and that the instructions of these cases “do not last forever”, in some extremes up to fifteen years, as they explain, while the accused may suffer “absolute helplessness” or see their current accounts withheld. The reform of the LECrim, in any case, is under study. “We’ll see how far we can go”, they allege.
The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, defended in this regard the opportunity for a reform of the LECrim to shorten the terms of the judicial instruction: “Neither can the status of a person be maintained permanently as an accused, as investigated, if the investigation does not progress or it is assessed that it is already reasonably concluded”, he alleged.
Together they continue to manage their silences. Only the president of the training, Laura Borràs, spoke about the possible reform of the LECrim. He ran away from study and refused to “make assessments on the fly”.
The one that did speak out yesterday from the pro-independence field was the Catalan Government. He believes that the Amnesty law, as currently drafted, can go ahead. He is not opposed to any other proposed amendment, but he does not think it is necessary to link the negotiation of criminal oblivion with this reform.
“They are not directly related”, stated yesterday the spokeswoman for the Government, Patrícia Plaja. “The Amnesty law was already robust enough to be approved and it will be necessary to see if the Criminal Procedure law can be improved”, he emphasized immediately, without ceasing to remember that the modification of a rule like this requires deadlines that they can extend over time.
“In terms of timing, now what is running faster is the amnesty and what we cannot allow to be conditioned by certain sectors is the approval of the amnesty, and that does not mean that we do not consider that it can be revised the LECrim”, he clarified.
Reluctance to the amendment also took shape in the parliamentary group of Sumar, in which a large part of the coalition formations prefer to detach it from the processing of the Amnesty law. The first to show her opinion was the leader of En Comú Podem, Aina Vidal. Despite the fact that she is in favor of exploring all avenues for the amnesty to be approved, Vidal warned that the possibility of reducing trial terms must maintain the “guarantees” of the parties in the procedural aspect.
In turn, Sumar’s parliamentary spokesman, Íñigo Errejón, defended the search for “a good balance” in an eventual change.
Outside the plurinational group, Podemos went a step further and, through the mouth of its leader, Ione Belarra, argued his refusal to carry out the aforementioned reform of the LECrim pointing out that in Spain “there are no problems with instruction deadlines, but with the bad instructions” derived from “judges who think they command more than Parliament”, with reference to the Magistrate of the National Court Manuel García-Castellón.