As of yesterday, there is no turning back. Pedro Sánchez took a step forward with the explicit defense, before the PSOE, of amnesty for those accused of the Catalan independence process. The agreement with Junts is on track. Not closed, as some differences persist, but neither side is in a position to stand up anymore. The journey made is greater than the distance that separates them from a pact that the Prime Minister, still in office, intends to be the closure of the crisis that took place in 2017 between Catalans and the rest of Spain.
The amnesty law is drafted. The focus of the negotiation has turned on his statement of reasons. At the beginning Junts insisted on the story about the validity of the 1-O that the socialists tried to modulate with a weighty argument: the rule will need the approval of the Constitutional Court. The PSOE did not even share with Junts the consideration of 1-O as a referendum. The text will be descriptive of what happened, that is to say, that there was a consultation declared illegal by the Constitution.
ERC’s latest foray into this debate hasn’t gone far. Republicans warned Thursday that they would reject a law that would make 1-O a crime. The negotiators of the PSOE and Junts have no need to get into this mess in the preamble that justifies the rule, but in the article the list of crimes of the defendants must appear so that they can take advantage of the amnesty. In fact, it is obvious that if there is an amnesty it is because crimes have been committed in the eyes of justice.
The PSOE has put all the focus on the fact that the law is constitutional, since it would be a very hard blow if the high court annulled it after the political attrition that its approval may entail for the party. It will be the socialists and, in particular, Sánchez, who will devote themselves to the explanation of the law. This is what has been agreed with Junts. In fact, the leader of the PSOE already started this task yesterday before the Federal Committee of his party. In the coming days, the rapprochement will be staged – it has not yet been decided, but a meeting between Carles Puigdemont or some leader close to him and a socialist who could be Santos – is not ruled out until the final rubric.
The amnesty is the heart of the agreement, but the envelope is a political pact. It may be the most time-consuming and, in fact, it is not yet fully closed. The negotiators – few in the name of discretion – have held arduous substantive discussions about the Catalan conflict and its origins. On the table has been the consideration of Catalonia as a nation (which already appears in the preamble of the Statute) or the existence of an “Catalan national minority”, an initial contribution by Junts that was ultimately rejected.
For Puigdemont’s negotiators, this national minority made it possible to consider the Catalans and, in particular, their pro-independence representatives, as a people oppressed by the Spanish State. It is one of the paths followed by the former president’s defense before European justice, since the CJEU, when it rejected MEP Puigdemont’s immunity, opened the door for the existence of repression to be demonstrated an “objectively identifiable group”. But most of the legal references in Europe to a national minority refer to people who belong to a dispersed and retaliated people such as, for example, the Roma. The PSOE objected that it was not viable to argue this situation in the EU, since the Catalans have ample self-government and resources, and their language is already spoken in the Spanish Parliament. In Junts, voices also emerged that saw it as a setback with regard to the status of a nation.
In the absence of knowing the details of the political agreement, it is likely that they will include references to the origins of the Catalan conflict and the need to resolve it through democratic means from this legislature. And there arises a stumbling block that negotiators still resist: the mediator. The PSOE accepts that there is a verification mechanism, but Puigdemont demands an international figure. The names of the Church have been put on the table, but the socialists have rejected them. Mediation is in the air. For the former president, an international rapporteur is essential, as it marks one of the key differences with the negotiation table between the central and Catalan governments led by ERC. It is also one of the elements that allows Puigdemont to defend the pact in front of his own people.
There is a lot of talk about the electoral effects that the amnesty could have for the PSOE, but Puigdemont is also worried about the reaction of pro-independence voters who consider that the agreement does not live up to the promises of recent years, based on rhetoric of resistance
Now that the agreement with Junts is already defined on the horizon of the investiture, the PSOE has begun to negotiate with the ERC and the PNB to face the final stretch more than three months after the elections. Sánchez will thus begin a new legislature in which he will have to deploy a huge capacity for dialogue with a myriad of forces that only have in common the fight against the idea of ??a central and centralist Spain. Yesterday, all the socialist delegates applauded Sánchez, except for those from Castilla-La Mancha.
