Over time, Mariano Rajoy delegated the resolution of the Catalan conflict to the judges and it is still pending a decade later with Pedro Sánchez in Moncloa, with pardons and an amnesty law. The National Court and the Supreme Court are today the tip of the spear against criminal oblivion, while the PP takes a breather to dig into the wound that the Koldo case has inflicted on the PSOE. The amnesty is not in the top 10 of the problems of the Spanish, but “the bad behavior of the politicians” is, according to the CIS. The PSOE has raised the bar of exemplarity but the PP shakes the pillars so that José Luis Ábalos falls to Sánchez.
The Koldo tsunami has swept away the PSOE’s damage control strategy around the amnesty. The dependence on Junts votes had become relevant and the negotiation was shielded against external vicissitudes. Also the judicial pressure? Without the will to agree, the dialogue would have broken off weeks ago, they say. Convinced of the pact and with the new endorsement of the Venice Commission, it is necessary to see who gives in. Another PSOE resignation weakens it at the worst moment and revolts ERC. On the other hand, the internal pressure on Carles Puigdemont is increasing.
Sánchez’s investiture pact included a draft of the amnesty law that was distorted by the reactivation of the Tsunami case. Three modifications later with parallel judicial actions and pending the last negotiation, the new decision of the Supreme Court arrives and the attribution to Puigdemont of a possible crime of terrorism.
The court is set up as a “Supreme government”, denounce the pro-independence parties. Censorship of politicians and the media. Where Sánchez invokes “common sense” to know “what is terrorism and what is not”, the Supreme responds that these theses are “incompatible” with the Penal Code. There are terrorists beyond ETA or Jihad, the magistrates maintain. And they point to Puigdemont, “his absolute leadership, intellectual authorship and assumption of the reins” of the riots of 2019.
The Criminal Chamber is verbose in its references to judgments on kale borroka; and remember that it was Dolores Delgado, as Attorney General of the State, who spoke of “violent Catalan independence movement” – from the CDR to Tsunami -. Independentism affirms with astonishment that the Supreme sees the reaction in the streets to its ruling more serious than the 1-O itself. The constitutional challenge of the referendum is overcome by the “subversion” and “serious destabilization of the democratic institutions” of the later protests.
A Junts believes that the Supreme Court’s interlocutory reaffirms its position vis-à-vis the PSOE: remove the exclusion from the crime of terrorism. “All the amnesty laws in history have stopped these things”, they say. The new element on the table for the pro-independence side is another report from the Venice Commission of February 23, in which it is pointed out that only Brazil and Kyrgyzstan exclude this crime from the laws of oblivion. ERC, which follows the negotiation in the background, also exhibits this document. “There are no restrictions on amnesty in EU states”.
The PSOE continues to cling in public to the exclusion of the crime of terrorism from the amnesty, but the Supreme, assuming “without any doubt” García-Castellón’s theses, implies a risk for Puigdemont. Junts sees in the Supreme Court’s decision a preventive attempt to disqualify Puigdemont politically, even avoiding his candidacy in the European elections. Speculations run high. A subpoena as investigated, another request to lift immunity to the European Parliament, an express prosecution, the reactivation of an arrest warrant now for terrorism…
The PSOE considers it essential that terrorism be excluded from the amnesty in order to pass the filter of the Constitutional Court and European justice. In Junts they reply that the most “mind-blowing” thing in Europe is an accusation of terrorism for demonstrations against a sentence. The clock is ticking. Just a week ago, Sánchez assumed that there would be an amnesty law and boasted that he had “all the time in the world”. Ábalos was still from the PSOE and Koldo García was eating shellfish…
