The tense atmosphere of the Congress of Deputies moved a few hours yesterday to Strasbourg, where the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, had to take stock of Spain’s presidency of the Council of the European Union, an appointment that become a kind of national plenum, rather than a European one. In the presence of former president Carles Puigdemont, Sánchez defended the amnesty law in Strasbourg, which he justified by the calls that the EU made for political dialogue in 2017, and warned that the “real threat” to the democracy in Spain is not its Government, but the alliances of the PP with Vox, whose MEPs took advantage of their interventions to charge against the pacts of the PSOE with Sumar and the sovereignists, while the chamber was filling up to participate in the round of votes following the debate on the Spanish presidency.

All eyes were fixed on the coincidence in the chamber of Puigdemont and Sánchez, but in the end the interaction that dominated the day was that of the head of the Spanish Executive with Manfred Weber, president of the European People’s Party. “Mr. Weber, I question him directly”, Sánchez told him between boos in his reply turn. “Do you feel comfortable being complicit in this threat?”, “do you know who are the allies of the PP in Spain?”, he asked him before reciting to him the extremist ideas of this formation about Europe, and brought his argument to the extreme when he came to evoke Nazi Germany.

“Vox is recovering the names on the streets of Spain of people linked to the dictatorship. Would this also be your plan for Germany, to return the names of the Third Reich to the squares of Berlin?”, questioned Sánchez Weber amid expressions of protest from the rest of the MEPs, including some foot stomping, which is rare in the institution In part, it was a repetition of the debate in Brussels a few weeks ago on the amnesty, with a lot of prominence from the Spanish deputies.

The appearance of the president of the central government should have been held in July, at the beginning of the Spanish presidency of the Council of the Union, but the elections forced it to be postponed and finally it was considered as a moment to “balance sheet” of the semester’s achievements, although from the first moment it had a strong national flavor.

“The wait has been worth it, Europe has gained a great ally in this progressive Government” that “will defend European principles and values”, assured Sánchez at the outset. The alternative to the progressive coalition he leads “was an alliance between the right and the ultra-right” that sought to “repeal progress” and “reapply failed neoliberal recipes”, he retorted.

The colorful note came right after the intervention of the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who took over from Sánchez. Unexpectedly, loud barking was heard in the chamber coming from – as it was later learned – a service animal of a visitor who was following the session from the gallery, even if heard from Spain they evoked the nickname of Perro Sanxe with which the opposition christened Pedro Sánchez and which the socialists later tried to capitalize on.

From his seat, Puigdemont awaited his turn, closer than ever to Sánchez since 2017. In his speech, which lasted just over a minute, the former president called attention to the Spanish president’s non-compliance and reproached him for not having succeeded in approving the official status of Catalan in the EU. In any case, beyond the coincidence in the chamber of Sánchez and Puigdemont – smiling because the amnesty took center stage in much of the debate – and the speeches, the details were also important.

The former president spoke in Spanish and avoided greeting the head of the Central Executive and Minister José Manuel Albares, who a few weeks ago he thanked for his efforts for the officialization of Catalan in Europe. If he had reached out to him, parallels would easily have been drawn with what the president of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, did in Congress in 2019.