Various socialist headquarters have been the subject of demonstrations throughout Spain in protest against Pedro Sánchez’s announcement to promote a amnesty law to get invested. The right to protest is a basic right in a democracy and in a rule of law like ours. All parties and other social groups have made use of this right at some point in recent history. From the PSOE or Izquierda Unida (Sumar’s predecessor) on the occasion of the Iraq war, from the PP to oppose abortion laws or educational reforms or from the independence movement to demand a referendum. Nothing to object to despite the objections that people make to each other when they are the target of the demonstrations and not the promoters. The right to demonstrate has the limit of use of violence and the normal functioning of the institutions. Escraches and signs always border on these limits, so it is better to avoid calling them. Every more or less massive demonstration has the risk of violent elements being embedded that far from sharing the objective of the protest, what they are seeking is protection to dynamit the democratic system. It happens in manifestations of one sign or another. And it must be criticized and rejected in any case, both by those who call for legitimate mobilizations and by those who are the target of the protest.
There are many people in Spain who do not share the initiative of the socialist candidate to grant amnesty to those convicted and prosecuted for the events that occurred in Catalonia. Some do it simply because they do not want Sánchez in the presidency of the Government, others because they do not want the PSOE and Sumar in the Moncloa, and there are also those who doubt the constitutionality of the measure and its effectiveness in overcoming the situation in Catalonia. This is the main nucleus of the protesters. The extreme right and the extreme right also aim to take to the streets because they are interested in destabilizing democracy and generating the sensation of an imminent breakdown of the State. And with them are added violent groups. The PSOE has quickly asked the PP to condemn these acts outside the limits of the right to demonstrate. But, finally, the one who has spoken out most forcefully has been the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, when deciding that she is not “even around the corner” with the ultras. She has once again broken her own stereotype and has made it clear to the rest of her party that she had condemned the events in front of the headquarters of the PSOE federal committee with a small mouth. That should be the path of all democrats: defend the right to demonstrate of those who think differently and condemn those who do so in a violent way.
The recurrence of demonstrations against the amnesty and the increase in participants should also make the candidate for the presidency of the Government reflect that promotes it and if not to abandon that idea, at least to debate it in Congress, which remains inexplicably closed in a gesture of institutional disloyalty as serious or more serious than the non-renewal of the government of the judges. Debating the issue in institutions is, possibly, the best way to calm tempers and deactivate the violent ones.