Neither “a new stage” opens, nor “today is a great day for Spanish democracy”, nor, of course, the Amnesty law, with the emblem of the PSOE, Junts and ERC, is “impeccable” . The arguments of the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, do not at all convince the PP, which will fight in the institutions, the courts and the streets this “law of impunity”, which it also considers a “humiliation”.
For the people, it is rather a “corrupt transaction” – with reference to the seven votes of Junts necessary for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez – comparable to the illegal commissions in the purchase and sale of masks at the hardest moment of the pandemic of the Koldo case, a crater whose eruption they hope will end up engulfing the Central Government entirely.
The amnesty, said the general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, after the approval of the bill in committee, was not reached in the name of coexistence in Catalonia, but for the “convenience” of Sánchez and his “personal ambition to remain in power”. And its beneficiaries, who have “amnestied themselves” because they participated in the drafting of the law, have already warned that they will insist on independence, now “in collaboration” with the Spanish Government.
This same argument was put forward from Bucharest, where he participated in the congress of the European People’s Party (EPP) that hailed Ursula von der Leyen as a candidate for the presidency of the European Commission, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who took advantage of the intervention to charge against the Amnesty law and denounce the Koldo case, for which the President of the Central Government was held responsible.
“These are two cases that together in my country, in one they steal public money and in the other they steal rights”, remarked the leader of the PP, who asked for support from his European political family to present a battle against these “attacks” on the rule of law and the independence of the Judiciary in Spain. A call that got an immediate response from the president of the EPP, Manfred Weber, who proclaimed that “Sánchez is becoming a puppet of Carles Puigdemont”, but which did not resonate with any of the prime ministers or presidents of the party who went take the floor in the Romanian capital.
“Today a European Government will leave unpunished very serious crimes against the heart of the European Union, including terrorism, embezzlement and the declaration of independence of a part of the country”, denounced Feijóo. The Executive of Sánchez “is every day more cornered and it is easier to extort by those who value the rule of law”, he exclaimed.
In any case, the Spanish delegation, the second largest of the EPP, felt “comforted” by the support of its European political family in relation to “the amnesty for crimes of corruption, terrorism and against the territorial integrity of Spain ” and “the political corruption in the Government which has sadly already reached the European Prosecutor’s Office”, in reference to the alleged use of community funds for the purchase of masks in the investigated plot.
“A majority of Spaniards see in the PP and the European Union the guarantee to stop these nonsense, today we cannot disappoint their trust”, Feijóo concluded his speech, after which the Bavarian Weber spoke, who drew parallel similarities between the struggle of the PP in Spain and the one led with great success by Donald Tusk in Poland: “What a shame, Sánchez! What a shame, the socialists! Long live Tusk and long live Alberto, who will restore the rule of law in Spain”, praised the head of the popular group in the European Parliament, for whom the amnesty law will serve to “forgive crimes of terrorism”.
In this context, and in the face of the uproar caused by previous statements in which Esteban González Pons seemed to hint that he might be absent, the PP finally confirmed its representative in the negotiations with the PSOE to unblock the renewal of the General Council of Judicial Power (CGPJ), with the mediation of the Commissioner of Justice of the European Union, Didier Reynders, scheduled for March 13 in Strasbourg.
González Pons left his presence somehow up in the air until the content of the pact between the PSOE, ERC and Junts was known: “It is very difficult to reach an agreement on the CGPJ with someone who is at the same time humiliating, disempowering and forcing the Supreme Court to correct itself and break the division of powers. We’ll see what happens tomorrow”, said the popular leader on Wednesday, who, taking into account that it was the PP who urged European mediation, party sources recall, will not miss the European meeting.
