Pedro Sánchez put the brakes on yesterday and did not succumb to Junts’ pressure. “What is unconstitutional is unconstitutional”, concluded the Spanish Government. But the formation of Carles Puigdemont did not relax either and fulfilled the threat to vote against the proposed Amnesty law promoted by the PSOE. The end result was a bucket of cold water for the Executive, who saw the processing of the key rule for the investiture delayed, which, in addition, may complicate the approval of the first general budgets of the term and, even, the course of this convulsive newborn legislature.
Despite the last-minute negotiations, the lack of final agreement between the PSOE and Junts – despite the fact that “the climate is not rough” between the two groups, the socialists admit – caused the processing of the Amnesty law to be braked dry yesterday in the plenary session of Congress and put the reverse gear. The legislative initiative thus returns to the complaint screen last week passed the Justice committee of the Lower House, where it will now be negotiated again for a maximum period of one month.
The positions were already encased at noon. “It doesn’t look good, if Junts doesn’t change its mind, the law won’t be approved and it will go back to the committee”, admitted the socialists. “If they do not accept the changes, we cannot vote in favor of the law”, warned the post-convergents. And in the middle of the afternoon the disagreement was consummated. The PSOE did not accept in the vote any of the Junts amendments that reached the plenary, and with which the pro-independence formation tried to include in the amnesty all the alleged crimes of terrorism and treason against the State that they impute to the process different judicial instances. Consequently, JxCat voted against the bill, but leaving the door open to new negotiations in the Justice committee.
The 171 yeses of the groups that support the legislature were defeated by the 179 nos that added the PP, Vox, UPN and the seven Junts deputies. Without the absolute majority required as it is an organic law, the president of Congress, Francina Armengol, announced that it will be returned to the Justice Committee, which will have to issue a new opinion no later than one month before to return to the plenum.
Appraisers in the Executive state that they do not have room to take on Junts’ maximum demand, but they trust that Puigdemont’s formation will change its position in order to save the law. And, although they admit that the budgets can be complicated, they say that Sánchez is absolutely determined to keep the legislature afloat. Junts, on the other hand, urges the PSOE to “reflect”. Nothing is impossible, but everything is more complicated.
And in Moncloa they are confident of being able to reach an agreement in the new negotiation period that is now open. The Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, considered at the exit of the plenum “absolutely incomprehensible” that Junts voted against an already agreed Amnesty law, in the same terms as the PP and the extreme right of Vox.
Before flying to Brussels, where today he has an appointment with Esteban González Pons and commissioner Didier Reynders to try to unblock the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary, Bolaños asked JxCat to “reconsider its position”. “The Amnesty law entered this Chamber impeccable and constitutional, and that’s how it will come out,” assured Bolaños.
During the debate prior to the plenary session – which was also attended by Oriol Junqueras and the new Vice-President of the Government, Laura Vilagrà -, the spokespeople for Junts and ERC only agreed on one thing: “Today is not an easy day”. Miriam Nogueras and Pilar Vallugera coincided. Apart from this, both dedicated veiled reproaches to the position of the rival group in the Catalan independence spectrum. Nogueras defended a “comprehensive amnesty” and warned that the agreement was “not to leave anyone out”. But he rejected “a selective and deferred amnesty” and full of holes, in his opinion, because the “prevaricating judges”, with express reference to Manuel García-Castellón and Joaquín Aguirre, campaign in his air to adjust the rule of law to their interests. Bolaños, at the exit of the plenary session, showed his “absolute rejection” of this remark by Nogueras.
“In the end it seems that everything was not so well connected”, criticized the spokeswoman for Junts in the PSOE. “Don’t be afraid to amnesty crimes that have not occurred”, he urged them. “We maintain the position, with all the risks”, he concluded, after reiterating, again in a veiled allusion to the Left, that “we are surely the only ones who are not tied hand and foot”.
“Are you sure you’re going to lose this opportunity?”, he replied, who defended the law as it was written, not to save Carles Puigdemont and Marta Rovira, but 1,500 accused in the process that for seven years, warned the spokeswoman of ‘ERC, “have their lives in question”. And he warned Junts that they are “falling into the trap” of the same “prevaricating judges” that Nogueras criticized, by trying to change the law based on their interlocutors.
The demands of the spokespersons of the PNB and EH Bildu to now approve the law in Congress, and “close a traumatic political cycle”, as defined by Mikel Legarda, finally fell on deaf ears. “One more chance cannot be given to those who try to sabotage this law and this legislature”, unsuccessfully claimed Ion Iñarritu.
And Alberto Núñez Feijóo – who ordered the withdrawal of all the PP amendments so that he could intervene last in the debate – was the one in the end who sang victory over the Sánchez Government: “We will democratically rescue our country from the moral misery to which the “They are condemning”, he promised.
