“A stage of confrontation, conflict and tension is coming to an end, of a breakdown of affection and coexistence that led to a decade in Catalonia in which no one won and we all lost, a decade of collective failure in which Catalonia was left stop,” celebrated the Minister of the Presidency and Justice, the socialist Félix Bolaños. “And we are opening a stage of dialogue, of agreements, where politics will be made within the institutions and within the Constitution,” he celebrated, before the Congressional Justice Commission approves a new opinion on the proposition this Thursday. of the Amnesty law, after the three-party agreement signed on Wednesday afternoon between the PSOE, Junts and Esquerra.
Bolaños has considered that this agreement is “the definitive step” to be able to approve the Amnesty law, which is expected to be validated on Thursday of next week in the plenary session of the Lower House, before being sent to the Senate, where the majority absolute of the Popular Party intends to delay the final approval of the norm for another two months. The Gordian knot of the legislature, and of Pedro Sánchez’s new mandate, can thus be untied.
“It is great news for Catalonia and therefore for all of Spain that we can approve this Amnesty law to definitively normalize political, institutional and social life in Catalonia,” the minister highlighted. And he has defined the future norm as “a courageous step, which ends a decade of tension, confrontation and conflict, and which opens a new stage of agreements.”
To begin with, with new general budgets of the State for this same 2024, essential to be able to provide political and economic stability to this uncertain new mandate of Pedro Sánchez, in the midst of a political storm due to the alleged corruption scandal of the Koldo case. “There will be a budget agreement, there is an unequivocal will from all the parliamentary groups that support the Government to have budgets,” Bolaños assured. In this way, as he has confided, it will be possible to clear up “three and a half years of progress, rights, coexistence, employment and economic growth.” A long legislature, he stressed, for “a Spain that advances with courage, without complexes.”
The minister highlighted that for the three-way talks between the PSOE, Junts and ERC to culminate “successfully” on Wednesday afternoon, to definitively agree on the wording of the Amnesty law, the draft of the Commission’s opinion was decisive. of Venice, the advisory body of the Council of Europe, which was announced last Friday. The negotiations between the groups, he has pointed out, “intensified” as a consequence of this ruling which, he has insisted, “endorses the Amnesty law”, despite the fact that the Popular Party does not consider it that way at all.
This Amnesty law, in Bolaños’ opinion, “is going to become an international reference.” It is, he stressed, “a constitutional and political tool, a powerful tool of reconciliation.” “The law is going to be a world reference, in accordance with the best European standards,” he insisted. “It is a law that comes from the Spanish Parliament, but it is a fully European and fully constitutional law,” he stressed.
The minister, however, has come to recognize that this controversial norm generates rejection in broad political and social sectors, even among the socialist ranks themselves. “It is undoubtedly a law that will surely be better understood in a few years, when it is proven that it has been useful,” he argued. Just as happened, in the last legislature, with the pardons to the imprisoned leaders of the process.
Bolaños, in any case, did not want to specify whether with the final wording the amnesty will expressly benefit the former president of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, on the run from Spanish justice in Belgium since 2017, who is now also charged with an alleged crime of terrorism. “It is the judges who have to apply the Amnesty law, who have the last word,” he justified. But he has stressed that “of course the will of all of us who have reached the agreement to approve this Amnesty law is that all the people involved in the independence process are amnestied, all of them.” “Today is a great day for our country,” the minister concluded.
