The Government suggests that the PP also offered Junts an amnesty so that it would not support Sánchez

Carles Puigdemont pointed out on Thursday, in a letter to all MEPs, that there could have been secret offers from the PP to Junts last summer, when the independentistas had not yet decided whether they would support the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, and the Government has jumped on quickly to that car to insinuate that yes, that offer existed and implied in practice an amnesty like the one that the PSOE has agreed with the group of the former Catalan president. For months now, political circles have been talking about this possibility, that the PP would offer Junts, if not an amnesty law, at least solutions with effects similar to the amnesty so that the independentists who still remain to be judged from the processes They don't have to go to jail. From pardons to legal mechanisms to escape convictions.

The only certain thing is that there were contacts between the PP and Junts in the summer of 2023, something that the popular and independentistas have recognized. But the PP maintains that when the independentists asked for amnesty, the negotiations ended. And at Junts they maintain an absolute mystery about the possible offers of the PP at that decisive moment, when it had not yet opted for either side. They were the days before the constitution of the Congress table, and the PP was trying to get Junts not to support the socialist Francina Armengol as president, the first great pact that opened the door to the investiture, which would arrive in November.

Puigdemont has only left the aura of mystery in that letter, with the possibility of revealing these negotiations in the future. “There is another thing of which I am completely convinced,” said the text of the former president. “If my party had allowed the investiture of the PP candidate, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, or had prevented that of Pedro Sánchez, these spectacles would have been saved. And we will also talk about this when it's time. As in the Russian plot, everything will be known.” This “everything will be known” has reactivated questions about the possibility, which the PP denies, that there was any solid offer regarding the penal future of the independentistas. The Government, which has information on this matter also from its conversations with the independentists, is convinced that this offer existed, and has let it slip on several occasions.

This Friday, from Galicia, the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, was emphatic: “If Junts had supported Feijóo's investiture, today the PP would be defending an amnesty law. I always ask a question in Congress and so far I have no answer. Mr. Feijóo, can you tell us what you offered to Junts in the negotiations you had with Junts during the summer and what you offered them specifically regarding their legal cases? Maybe if Feijóo answered this question, it would be much easier to understand everything,” he noted.

The PP admits the conversations but denies that the offer existed. The general secretary, Cuca Gamarra, was clear this Friday: “When we learned about Junts' demands, we told them that we were not willing to accept them,” she says. In fact, Feijóo said in his investiture attempt that he was not president because he had not accepted the amnesty, unlike Sánchez, which has led the socialists for months to mock the PP leader with the idea that he is the only candidate. that he is not president because he does not want to. In reality, Feijóo had the problem of uniting the support of Junts and Vox at the same time, something practically impossible. He already failed in his attempt to convince the PNV precisely because the nationalists did not want to support a PP and Vox government.

The issue of the relations of the PP and Junts has been very controversial within the right. Feijóo at one point wanted to approach this party, and not only ordered those contacts to explore a possible agreement, in which it was enough for Junts to abstain from his investiture or not support Sánchez's, which would have caused a repeat election. The PP leader also wanted to meet with Junts spokesperson, Miriam Nogueras, in her round of contacts. But the pressure against that attempt was very strong on the right, and Feijóo finally ended up giving up. Afterwards, the PP leader said that Puigdemont had “respect” for him because in the PP's conversations with Junts he had not lied, words for which he was once again highly criticized in the conservative world.

Finally, now the PP has completely changed its line and, as Puigdemont denounced in his letter to the MEPs, since Junts decided to support Sánchez it has toughened its speech about them to the point that now the PP publicly maintains that there was terrorism in the Tsunami case and that Puigdemont should be charged. This led this Wednesday, in the control session in Congress, to Bolaños to demand that the PP clarify with Junts, whether he thinks that he is a terrorist or a respectable negotiator. “Why did the PP meet with parties that they now consider terrorists to achieve Feijóo's investiture? Or were those parties that are terrorists today in the summer not terrorists? Or are all those who did not support Mr. Feijóo's investiture terrorists? “Are we all terrorists?” Bolaños cried in Congress.

Absolute hermeticism

In any case, the most important thing now is to know if Junts is going to reveal these conversations, as seemed to emerge from Puigdemont's letter. Junts treats with absolute secrecy any negotiations that have to do with the deals it maintains with other political forces. With this premise, the party does not make official statements regarding the approaches it had with the PP before Puigdemont ordered support for Sánchez's investiture. In the letter to the MEPs, Puigdemont assured that if Junts had facilitated the investiture of the PP candidate he would have avoided being a victim of a persecution strategy promoted by the “judicial, economic and media right”, sponsored by former president José María Aznar. Junts has only admitted one formal contact to discuss Feijóo's investiture. Josep Rius, party spokesman and Puigdemont's most trusted figure, and Albert Batet, president of the parliamentary group, met in August in a hotel in Barcelona with the popular councilor of the Barcelona city council, Daniel Sirera, and the communications expert politics Xavier Domínguez. The negotiation did not bear fruit, but at the moment none of them has clarified what the PP's offer was.

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