The PSOE and Junts have closed the agreement for the amnesty law and with this give way to the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, which will be in the coming days, according to negotiation sources. The agreement with the PNV remains to be signed, but the socialists assure that it is very advanced and only needs to be closed. Everything was prepared to seal the pact with Junts on Thursday of last week, but the negotiations have been delayed for seven days, especially due to the fear of the independentists that a non-clear wording of the law could leave some people out of the amnesty. people around Carles Puigdemont. They feared any detail that would open the door for some judges who are clearly against it to find some legal loophole to not apply it in their cases.
After a few intense days of technical negotiations, with Santos Cerdán, number three of the PSOE, installed in Brussels, and Puigdemont leading the Junts team, the agreement was closed early this Thursday in the Belgian capital. The law will still have to be technically outlined between the teams, and will be presented later, but the political agreement has already been closed and there seems to be no going back. The Junts bases will have to approve this decision, but no surprises are expected. The pact does not only imply the amnesty, there is also the so-called political agreement ―which includes a dialogue table between parties with a mediator―, the details of which should be known this Thursday.
In recent days, there was concern about the delay of the agreement, but in neither party was there a feeling that the pact was at risk. Once closed, it is difficult for the investiture to arrive this week, because it would be necessary to force a lot, but it could be as soon as the next one starts, Monday and Tuesday, or in the middle of the week, Wednesday and Thursday, if the law is registered on the Monday after to polish it during the weekend and also agree on it with the other groups that have to sign it. The idea of the PSOE is that the norm bears the signature of all the parties that will support the investiture: PSOE, Sumar, ERC, Junts, PNV, Bildu and BNG.
Everything is already planned to make the agreement official in Brussels with a photo in which Jordi Turull, general secretary of Junts, and Santos Cerdán, organizational secretary of the PSOE, are expected to appear. Both have acted as fully trusted delegates of Carles Puigdemont and Pedro Sánchez, respectively. A small group of people from the Junts management is traveling at this time from Barcelona to Brussels to be able to attend the ceremony to formalize the agreement. The leader of Junts will undoubtedly also want to explain an agreement on which he has been working in person for three months, after the electoral result made him a decisive figure for Spanish politics after six years in Belgium, avoiding Spanish justice and away from the heart of the decisions.
During the last few days, the noise of the riots in Madrid by the ultra groups against the amnesty is not the only thing that has resonated among the PSOE and Junts negotiators in Brussels. The response from the judiciary has been heard even more clearly, from the institutional declaration against the grace measure promoted by the conservative majority of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) to the last-minute actions of the judge of the National Court Manuel García-Castellón, charging former president Carles Puigdemont for the case Democratic Tsunami. The magistrate, contrary to the opinion of the Prosecutor’s Office, sees possible terrorism crimes in this case, so his message ended up convincing the two negotiating parties that the agreed law will have to be protected. “There should be no other possible interpretation,” the parties maintain. The negotiations were not, in the final hours, political, but were in the hands of legal experts on both sides. They are the ones who analyze the “exchanged” roles in a “constant flow” that has not been interrupted at any time, all parties confirm.
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Negotiation sources assure that García-Castellón’s order on Monday made Junts want to review one by one all the articles of a law that was already practically closed. They needed to be 100% sure that judges like the magistrate who cited Puigdemont and Rovira as defendants, and who would be one of those who would have to apply the amnesty, could not find legal loopholes to leave a law that is so difficult to negotiate to nothing. Junts’ fear is that it will happen as happened with the reform that involved eliminating the crime of sedition and changing the crime of embezzlement, and which came to practically nothing when the Supreme Court decided that these changes were not applicable to the cases against the leaders of the processes.
The law must be “untouchable” and has to be “made to legal perfection,” say the sources familiar with the negotiations, because it cannot have any crack that makes it vulnerable at any point in the legislative path that it will have to follow. “We know that they are going to dissect the law” and put “the best of their people” to look for weaknesses, indicate the sources consulted.
In the PSOE there was concern about the delay, but the most informed leaders were sure that there would be an investiture. Sánchez himself, who went to the headquarters on Ferraz Street on Wednesday to support the PSOE workers, sent a clear message to reassure everyone. “There will be a Government and we will continue for four more years,” he assured, taking the agreement for granted. The socialists also believe that the violent protests serve to remind many progressives why they voted for the PSOE or Sumar in the general elections on July 23: in large part, to prevent someone like Santiago Abascal, who encourages these protests and asks the police to disobey the Government, former vice president of Alberto Núñez Feijóo. This pressure, therefore, could be counterproductive for the right and serve as glue for a left disconcerted by the delay in the investiture, according to several leaders.
Junts was not in as much of a hurry as the PSOE. Every day that passed was an added role for Carles Puigdemont and allowed him to gain distance from the agreement that the PSOE closed with Esquerra last week. An agreement that activates the transfer of commuter trains to the Generalitat and that gives the green light to a reduction of almost 20% of Catalonia’s debt with the Autonomous Liquidity Fund (15,000 million euros).
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