After 45 years of the Constitution coming into force in this democratic phase, unprecedented, unprecedented situations continue to occur in the House of Representatives, which experts have yet to interpret. This happened this Tuesday in the long-awaited plenary session to debate and adopt the amnesty law promoted by the PSOE and its partners in favor of the leaders convicted and prosecuted for the independence process in Catalonia at the request of the Catalan separatist parties Junts and ERC. . Junts once again increased the tension of this complex negotiation by first voting positively for the opinion on this law, which he had already approved last week with the other allies of the executive in the Justice Commission, but then voting against it with the PP and the Justice Commission extremely right. from Vox to validate the entire project because it wants to extend the negotiations even further. “A selective and deferred amnesty is not what we signed,” warned Miriam Nogueras, spokeswoman for Carles Puigdemont’s party. This determination of Junts, who demanded the approval of his amendments in return for his vote for the final text, and with which the PSOE did not agree, led to this first and painful defeat of the government project at the beginning of an increasingly parliamentary legislative period. unsure. The opinion of the law thus returns to the Judicial Commission, where the parties must decide within 15 days whether to retouch this opinion or whether to negotiate corrections to the amendments considered valid in this forum.
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The most important project of this 15th legislative period, which has not yet gained political momentum, was thus slowed down in this first full session of Congress. In the end, the PSOE and Sumar in the government collected 171 votes for this text (the seven from ERC, the six from EH Bildu, the five from the PNV, the four from Podemos and one from the BNG). On November 13th, the socialists registered alone. The parliamentary right added 179 votes against and eight more rejections, adding to the 135 PP deputies the 33 from Vox, the Unión del Pueblo Navarro, the Canary Coalition and the seven parliamentarians from Junts.
The Socialists in the government maintained open contacts with Junts until the end, to the point that during the entire debate even some of the negotiators were not in the chamber, as was the ERC chairman Oriol Junqueras, who was present at some point in the guest gallery and possible Beneficiaries of the amnesty, the spokesperson of Junts, the Minister of Justice Félix Bolaños or the organizing secretary of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán. All these attempts were in vain. Bolaños explained at the end of the session that he did not understand the position of Junts – which had previously supported the text in question four times –, he appreciated the content of the law as “impeccable, solid and completely constitutional” and added: “It is “incomprehensible “that Junts is voting against a law that has been agreed upon.”
Ministers María Jesús Montero and Félix Bolaños (right) and PSOE Deputy and Organizing Secretary Santos Cerdán attend the extraordinary plenary session of the Congress this Tuesday. Alvaro Garcia
Junts spokeswoman Miriam Nogueras, with a direct connection to former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont, who fled from Spanish justice and lives in Brussels, was as always forceful. Junts, Nogueras stressed, “want a comprehensive amnesty that leaves no one behind, leaves no one out.” On half a dozen occasions, the separatist leader disqualified the Spanish judicial system and especially the judiciary as “subterfuges” and rejected the PSOE’s intention to create a “selective “Amnesty” if she learned that the top judicial officials of the state were taking “arbitrary” measures and “pulling out crimes” in order to “play politics” and thus “persecute” the Catalan independence leaders.
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Miriam Nogueras therefore claimed that the PSOE “allows itself to be carried away by this “justice policy agenda”” and placed it on the same level as the PP as parties that “do not want to break the Franco regime installed in many state institutions”. The Junts spokesman blamed the PSOE for not accepting further changes to the text of the law that it agreed to last week and which had already expanded the possible beneficiaries of the amnesty to include all crimes other than terrorism against human rights or torture. He pointed out that the Socialists had informed them that the rule could be challenged by the Supreme Court of the European Union in a year. The MP did not expressly express Junts' voting position in this first intervention, but left evidence in the chamber that it would not be positive.
The other allied parties to the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, who took office just 75 days ago, stuck to the plans. PNV spokesman Mikel Legarda was the first to speak and set the tone for the others. The executive branch's partners support the amnesty because they believe that this political decision “could contribute to the general interest of harmony and address a political and institutional crisis in ways other than judicial means”, following the way in which the The separatist challenge was met in 2017 by the PP government of Mariano Rajoy. This thesis was repeated by ERC spokesperson Pilar Valluguera, Néstor Rego from BNG, Martina Valverde from Podemos, Jon Iñarritu from EH Bildu and Gerardo Pisarello from Sumar.
Pilar Valluguera took the opportunity, as ERC officials always do now, to throw an internal electoral dart at Junts, warning that this opportunity should be used to impose a rule that could benefit 1,500 Catalans, and she kept it decided the rule was sufficient and strongly denied that a terrorist act had taken place in Catalonia during these years.
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Shortly before the plenary session, the PP withdrew the validity of its 22 amendments in order to change the order of intervention of its leader, who took the opportunity to appear as the representative of the force with the most votes in last place. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez only entered the plenary chamber after the debate, when the plenary session was interrupted at the end to record the votes. At the very beginning of his speech, Feijóo summarized his opposition: “The law is a payment, a payout from the PSOE, which the independence movement receives with the sole purpose of keeping Pedro Sánchez in power.” He then repeated the popular argument about humiliation and daily humiliation to which Sánchez subjected the PSOE. And he did not miss the opportunity to sharply attack some of his partners, especially the PNV and the Junts.
Vox attacks the PP
Santiago Abascal, the leader of Vox, attacked the law as a “betrayal by Sánchez,” “political corruption” and “the dismantling of the rule of law,” but devoted good space to demonizing the style of the “part-time opposition on Sunday.” but not on Mondays” from Feijóos PP.
The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, refers to the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, Alvaro Garcia, during a plenary session this Tuesday in the Lower House
The vote saw an outpouring of groups with differing views on the next steps to be taken with the law, which comes into effect tomorrow, as the experts consulted had no precedent to draw on. The bill was not passed, but his opinion was. This text will be sent back to the Congressional Judiciary Committee, which ratified it last week. The Commission could adopt it entirely or amend it by discussing the amendments tabled at this meeting, which could now be amended if a majority agrees. Article 131 of the Rules of Congress provides for a period of one month for the removal of this obstacle, but it could be shorter and reduced to 15 days, taking into account that at that time the processing of this rule was authorized by emergency measures.
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