The first vote on the legal text of the amnesty will be tomorrow. The consideration will have an absolute majority of 178 deputies in favor, eight political groups that support “turning the page”, as well as the legal endorsement of the lawyers of the General Courts. It is a question of the State like all those that have to do with democratic coexistence in our country. And the one who organizes coexistence in a full democracy is not the judiciary but the Parliament. But we have already seen this and it is worth remembering what happened almost twenty years ago, because today’s amnesty debate is about the Catalan nation and the Statute of 2006. The Catalan nation then had the ratification by Catalonia and previously with a majority political agreement in the Catalan Parliament. Even so, despite being included in “a preamble without legal effects”, it was taken from “a good ribot”, a phrase – if you’ll allow me – outside of any “democratic didactic”. They were coming to tell us – today it can be seen with crystal clear clarity – that the expression of the majority will of the Catalans and its acceptance within the constitutional framework was the least. When organizing coexistence is in a democracy – and always – the most decisive, because it defines what kind of democracy we are.
Nor did they want to talk about organizing progress and coexistence, even if 120 out of 135 Catalan parliamentarians approved the project to reform their Statute. And what could not be lowered in Congress, which had 189 votes in favor, was then turned over to the Constitutional Court (TC). In a highly disputed vote, the TC also came to say, by 6 votes to 4, that what the Catalans ratified had no place in the Constitution. And, of course, more than a million and a half demonstrators showed their opposition to the sentence in 2010. What was the main political consequence? That was like de facto removing 88% of the Catalan voters who approved the text in Parliament from the political and constitutional game.
Now that all the actors are again operating politically, which is, in addition to the economic transformations and social policies, the main achievement of Pedro Sánchez, they want to do the amnesty, through the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the same as in the Statute with the TC. But these almost twenty years “from the Statute to the amnesty” we have learned to fight the root of the problem, also the TC: trying to solve political conflicts using the courts so as not to have to face the political agreement – which it is the true spirit of the “teaching of transition” and of our Constitution – it is something we do not want to be part of our democracy.
This correction by the TC took the organization of coexistence out of the political debate and it was like that until October 2017, when the justice took it upon itself to pass through the addressee what politics did not want to solve in Catalonia , neither for that of October 2017, nor for the sentence of 2010. This is how it must be explained in Europe so that our partners and the CJEU understand that the new corrective aims at a single political purpose: to go back twenty years into se in the disconnection between a peripheral and transversal majority and the existing institutional framework, especially when 7 out of 10 voters want to modify the Constitution in some way.
The time of the confrontation that began with the Statute is over and the time of total reunion continues thanks to the rule of law, pardons and a political style that starts from dialogue and negotiation, which is the norm in the EU . All the actors are already operating in the institutions. It will cost a lot to recover 88% of Catalan parliamentarians with a common idea, but we are on our way. In the middle there will undoubtedly be defeats and victories until the next Catalan elections. But look, all our presidents have a common denominator: they made a virtue out of necessity. Is it like that. And when they weren’t ready, they fell. That’s why, from Tierra firme, I stick with the following assertion that I emphasize for obvious reasons: you need to “know how to win and know how to lose” (page 70). And “knowing how to stop” to “clarify”, which is what the president of the central government did by calling the elections of 23- J. Of necessity, virtue. Again. How to promote amnesty in Congress. Because of what happened with the Statute yesterday. And for coexistence today and always.
