Unlike the constitutions of Italy or Germany, which, after the experience of fascism, require citizen commitment to the principles and values ??enshrined in the Magna Carta, the Spanish one is not a militant Constitution, so the PP has had to qualify this Thursday, a day after including his proposal to create a specific criminal offense for constitutional disloyalty in his amendment to the entire amnesty law.
“You cannot persecute anyone for their ideas, but you can persecute them for their actions if they are criminal,” argued the PP spokesperson in Congress, Miguel Tellado, before a meeting of the board of directors of the popular parliamentary group to prepare the activity. January, which will begin with the request for the appearance of the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, to give an account of the migration crisis in the Canary Islands.
After citing the Supreme Court as a principle of authority, which warned of the lack of protection of the rule of law after the repeal of the crime of sedition and the “cheapening” of embezzlement in the last legislature, Tellado has striven to limit itself to the “territorial challenge ” the reform of the Penal Code proposed by the PP, which would be limited, as stated, to punishing incitement to disobey the laws, the calling of illegal referendums or declarations of independence.
These “unreasonable behaviors,” stated the popular leader, do not represent “anything new,” because the law has already included, since 2012, the criminal liability of political formations as legal entities: “We have not invented anything, the parties They can be sentenced to dissolution under the current legal system if they commit criminal acts, as stated in article 33.7 of the Penal Code,” he recalled.
What it is about now, he insisted, is to “rearm the State” in the face of “the threat” of secessionism, given that the independentists not only “have not repented” but have reiterated their desire to “do it again.” “, in reference to the statements of the leaders of ERC, with President Pere Aragonès at the helm, and of Junts, whose strings are handled by Carles Puigdemont from Brussels, to “open a new process” with the demand for a referendum agreed in Catalonia.
With the new criminal type proposed by its amendment to the entirety with alternative text of the amnesty law, which will be debated, together with that of Vox, next week in Congress with no signs of it being able to move forward, the PP intends to put a stop to it. to the “attacks on the essence of the Constitution” and reintroduce the criminal cases that were eliminated with the suppression of the crime of sedition.
To do this, Tellado hopes to have the support of the European institutions, which he sees as “concerned about the democratic quality of Spain”, and in whose Parliament the amnesty law has not yet been approved, given the warnings of the PP and the Citizens that it “attacks the separation of powers.”
“We defend the equality of Spaniards before the law. We are all obliged to submit to the rule of law and, therefore, no party or politician can believe itself above it,” exclaimed the PP spokesperson before a crowd of journalists. And, in this sense, he has asked himself if the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, can allow, “by seven votes”, that there be parties outside the law. “That is a very damaged democracy,” he declared.
