What else does Juntos want? This is the question asked by many socialist leaders (and some from other parties) who try to defend the amnesty law without always finding the understanding of their environment. Perhaps the attitude of Carles Puigdemont seeks to humiliate the PSOE, as the Popular Party maintains?
When the socialists introduced the text of the law to Congress, once agreed with the pro-independence parties, Junts announced that he would not present a single amendment. “It is a text that we share from top to bottom”, literally assured Jordi Turull, general secretary of the party. Moreover, ERC did have reservations about the exclusion of terrorism. Republicans feared maneuvers by the judge of the National Court, Manuel García-Castellón, in the Democratic Tsunami case, in the sense of attributing terrorist acts to Puigdemont and ERC leader Marta Rovira. Together, officially, it seemed to be in agreement with what was agreed, although there were those around the former president who were not clear.
Since November, the fears of independence have been confirmed. Judge García-Castellón has reactivated his case and has rescued from the summary alleged new evidence that would support the accusation of terrorism. That is why Junts and ERC together brought an amendment to yesterday’s plenary to ask the PSOE to remove any reference to terrorism as a crime to be excluded from the amnesty. Junts’ concerns increased and the party presented another amendment with the PNB in ??which the application of the amnesty to the accused in the Voloh case was shielded. Indeed, Judge Aguirre, who has been investigating this case for years on alleged connections between Puigdemont’s collaborators and a Russian plot to destabilize Europe in exchange for supporting the independence of Catalonia, issued an act this week by which it gives more time to investigate and points to a possible crime of high treason.
In short, Junts has entered into a dynamic of playing cat and mouse with the judges and tries to guarantee that the law will be applied to all those prosecuted. The slogan that the leadership of the party spread yesterday was “everyone or nobody”. On the other hand, the PSOE is more concerned that the law overcomes the filters of the Constitutional Court and of the legal bodies of the EU to which it may reach. Socialists could assume that the Constitutional amended some collateral point of the law, but not a full-fledged overturning so that the Court considers that an ad hoc law has been made for some specific people. And what does ERC think? That maybe the Republicans don’t want to ensure that the law applies to as many people as possible?
Obviously yes. But at ERC they fear that saying “who wants everything, loses everything”. They believe that it would be a serious mistake to throw this opportunity overboard and prefer to tie the law already. It is also true that if some of those affected are left out, it will always be easier to rescue them with pardons as long as the PP does not govern.
In short, the law is not only in danger because Junts finally refuses to approve it, but because it can be born weakened before the Constitutional Court and before the judges, who will always be the ones who will have the last word, since they are the ones who will have it to apply It would be a great irony if the amnesty fell due to Junts’s negative vote. In this case, its leaders should also explain to the hundreds of potential beneficiaries of the law that they will not be in the end to try to include some more.
