Pedro Sanchez This Wednesday he wanted to focus his speech before the European Parliament on international affairs. Open strategic autonomy. The wars in Middle East and Ukraine. The fight against climate change. But the appearance, to take stock of the Spanish presidency of the EU during the semester that will end on December 31, had the only protagonist a domestic initiative: the ‘procés’ amnesty, promoted to guarantee the support from ERC and Junts to the recent investiture of the leader of the PSOE.
With Carles Puigdemont taking the floor in the chamber, and after listening to the very harsh attacks of the PP and Vox (“supreme infamy”, “decadence of democratic values” or own initiative of a “tyrant”, pointed out by both parties about the amnesty), the head of the Executive had no choice but to stop during his reply on the controversial grace measure, whose law had taken the first step the day before in the Congress of Deputies. The European Parliament became a extension of the Spanish lower house.
Before winking at the former president of the Generalitat, Sánchez said in his response to the groups: “I have heard erroneous and malicious statements about the rule of law in my country. I can’t let them pass. The data is categorical: Spain is one of the fullest democracies of the world. “It is a young, imperfect democracy, but superior in quality according to empirical studies to some of the oldest in the world.”
The head of the Executive then went on to attack the PP for its pacts with the extreme right and his refusal to renew the expired General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), a behavior that he insisted on labeling as a “clear case of lawfare,” and from there he went on to justify without half measures the measure of grace. “The amnesty law is a important step in the right direction. “It is supported by a large majority of Congress, it is constitutional and it only pursues the goal of overcoming the conflict,” he said, basing, as on other occasions, his thesis on the so-called “reunion agenda” with Catalunya deployed since he arrived at Moncloa in 2018. “The results are there: the pardons “They have worked, normalization is working and I am convinced that the amnesty will underpin the noble objective of harmony,” he said. applause, boos and calls to order by the president of the European Parliament, the Italian Roberta Metsola.
The warning of the ‘expresident’
Faced with the words of the PP and Vox, Puigdemont himself, the leader who personifies the amnesty more than any other because he will benefit of her after having left Spain to avoid being judged, was temperate. The former president issued a warning about the need for the PSOE to comply with the agreement with Junts during the recently inaugurated legislature, but avoided threatening to overthrow the next State’s general budgets or even support a hypothetical motion of censure on the right, as he did a couple of weeks ago.
“Opportunities must be taken advantage of when they occur. If they let themselves pass by fear, “The consequences are never pleasant,” he noted. “It is in our hands to achieve it,” Sánchez replied, making clear his commitment to building bridges with Junts, through a negotiation forged outside the borders of Spain and in the face of a international verifier, the Salvadoran diplomat Francisco Galindo Velez. Puigdemont made no mention of the amnesty.
The PP and Vox, on the other hand, based everything on the judicial file to the ‘procés’, leaving aside matters within the scope of the EU. German started Manfred Weber, spokesman for the popular Europeans and a leader very close to the party led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo. “The basic principle of democracy is tell the truth before the elections. “You cannot promise that you will not give an amnesty and then applaud that amnesty,” said Weber, who defended that the European Parliament investigate the Spanish Congress if it, as Junts claims and the PSOE rejects, attacks the behavior of some judges.
The “dignity of Spain”
Dolors Montserrat, PP MEP and former Minister of Health, went further. She portrayed Sánchez as a president “without principles or words that sweeps away everything to continue governing”, including “equality among Spaniards”, the “dignity of Spain” and “European values.”
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There were hardly any differences with Vox. From the extreme right formation, Jorge Buxade He spoke of “unprecedented nepotism,” of “narcissism.” and “ruin”, of a “trampled” Constitution. through a “criminal deal forged in a seedy Brussels hotel with a gang of looters and fugitives of Justice. He ended up calling on citizens to protest without pause. “You will go down in history as the perjured president, for trying to destroy everything that our parents and grandparents built with effort. But don’t hurry. Neither their complaints nor threats are going to silence us. In front of the tyrant, permanent mobilization”, he concluded.
Practically the only voice that did not pronounce the word amnesty was that of Ursula von der Leyen. The president of the Commission, who spoke just after Sánchez’s first intervention, applauded the President of the Government for having assumed the community mandate in “incredibly difficult circumstances” and he focused on the situation in Israel, on migration, with the complex community pact around the corner, and on energy policy, where Europe has managed to drastically reduce its dependence on fossil fuels coming from Russia. But the tense plenary session then passed for a very different path.