Pere Aragonès, president of the Generalitat, went to the Senate again, as he did half a year ago, to defend the amnesty in the general commission of the Autonomous Communities. The feeling is that it was a repeated card, a VAR review or a passed test. But Aragonès explained that he planned to repeat in the Upper House because it was a way to “troll the PP, which he always wants.” Trolear is not a Catalan term, but a colloquial Spanish verb that means to provoke, offend or make fun of someone. Millennials would call that “making a roast.”
The truth is that the president trolled the socialists more than the popular ones, perhaps because he thought it was a good campaign spot and what better than to use his ten minutes in the Senate to make fun of Miquel Iceta, Salvador Illa and Pedro Sánchez, who According to their words, they shouted that there would be no amnesty or referendum, and they have approved the measure of grace and the same will happen with the consultation. And taking off, he concluded: “The amnesty is a complete amendment to an unjust sentence and is the victory of free Catalonia. “Nothing we did is a crime.”
The socialist barons were not in the room, nor was the Government, so they did not take any notice. The popular senator Antonio Silván was happy in his turn to speak, as he described the socialists as “indecent” for manipulating the legal system in the service of a fugitive (sic) and “immoral” for clinging to the lifeline of a fugitive in order to govern.
This time, Aragonès did not leave after finishing his intervention and could see that the PP has turned the amnesty into the battering ram to overthrow the Government. The Senate is more trench than ever, as if the institutions mattered little. By the way, no one used the argument of the Catalan Jordi Canal, professor at the Paris School of Social Studies, in El Mundo to refute Aragonès, when he stated that the referendum is essential to resolve the sovereignty conflict between the State and Catalonia. In Canal’s opinion, the conflict is, in reality, between two Catalan models of understanding how Catalonia should be situated in Spain. But her lordships do not tread so finely.
