The Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, assumes the profile of “free verse” in the Central Government and the PSOE. In this role, and therefore aside from the official position of the Executive, Puente yesterday endorsed the words expressed the day before by the Minister for Social Rights of the Generalitat, Carles Campuzano, when he affirmed that the claim of the Government of Pedro Sánchez would be to pardon all those charged in the process who ultimately cannot be accommodated in the future Amnesty law, still under discussion between the PSOE and Junts.
“I don’t think what Campuzano says is any nonsense”, assured the minister after inaugurating the section of the B-40 between the Barcelona municipalities of Viladecavalls and Olesa de Montserrat.
This amnesty, Puente defended, “would avoid all that it means for the Spanish judicial system to continue with all this”, referring to the open causes of the process. “I am surprised that there are even those who say, in the Popular Party, that no, that they submit to trial and then pardon them”, pointed out the minister regarding the turn of Alberto Núñez Feijóo himself when he opened the door to “pardons conditioned” for Carles Puigdemont and the rest of the defendants. “Man, let’s save the work of the justice system, which has a lot of resources, and it doesn’t work either”, quipped Puente, alluding to this new position of the leader of the PP.
“If what we are going to do is subject people, seven years later, to a judicial procedure to end up pardoning them, let’s save ourselves this effort and let’s also save the justice system. It doesn’t make much sense. That is why the Amnesty law is the most necessary, most convenient and most useful solution at this time”, defended the minister. “Because, among other things, what he will do is to avoid a judicial pilgrimage that will eventually lead to a pardon, it makes no sense”, alleged the socialist leader.
“If we all have a clear diagnosis, let’s pass the Amnesty law and avoid having to put these people on trial,” he reiterated.
Puente regretted that the PP first opposed the pardons and now the amnesty, despite Feijóo’s latest “confessions”, and assured that in the Government “we are open to solutions that lead to the end of this episode in our history, of which we want to turn a leaf”.
Puente himself, however, later denied that he had advocated for the amnesty to be approved to save work for the judges, as criticized by Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo. “I didn’t say that. I said that if what the PP defends is pardon, why does it want to make justice work unnecessarily. Let him support the amnesty”, said the minister.
The Central Government, however, avoids the debate on pardoning those left out of the amnesty, and maintains the position already expressed by the Minister of the Presidency and Justice, Félix Bolaños: “The Amnesty law does not leave anyone out”.
