The Amnesty law as such will be approved at the end of this month in Congress, but the norm has already been consolidated as a tangible reality with the results of the Catalan elections this past Sunday. The polls have ratified the spirit of the norm with the victory of the PSC and the loss of the pro-independence majority. One of the great arguments of the opponents of the amnesty, beyond the injustice that they understood that penal oblivion entailed, was the revival of the independence movement. A victory for Carles Puigdemont, who has kept the procés speech alive, would have meant a full-fledged discrediting of Pedro Sánchez’s speech focused on the pacification of Catalonia.
The dialectical missiles that were prepared for this eventuality could not be used. It is significant these days to read or listen to columnists who are very critical of Sanchismo who have had no problems in giving it credit for having stopped the independence wave. Who still does not seem to have found out or, rather, prefers not to find out due to the proximity of the European elections, is the Popular Party. Alberto Núñez Feijóo does not want to let go of his oft-repeated speech that Sánchez’s strategy revives the independence movement. That is why he insisted again yesterday in saying that the socialist leader will end up handing “the key” to the governability of Catalonia and Spain to Puigdemont, and that he will end up being president with the votes of the PSC. I would dare to write that this possibility is only foreseen today by Puigdemont and Feijóo themselves.
I don’t know if, as a minister said privately yesterday, “the amnesty has been a giant step and will mean the greatest pacification that has ever occurred in Catalonia.” What is clear is that this controversy has already gone largely unnoticed in the Catalan electoral campaign, and yesterday the Popular Party itself chose not to appeal it, for the moment, before the Constitutional Court. The PP, however, maintains its protest rally on May 26. We will see when the last electoral event of this long period passes, the European elections of 9-J, if the processing of the amnesty has any political importance.
