“It is the saddest and most decadent session since February 23, 1981,” Alberto Núñez Feijóo stated, with all the gravity of the statement. The leader of the PP did not mention the word bang, which did reverberate throughout the speech of Santiago Abascal, great captain of Vox: “Blow to the Constitution, to the rule of law, to the dignity of the Spanish, to the nation…”. Feijóo announced that he will appeal to “all national and international bodies” to prevent the amnesty law for those prosecuted by the processes go into effect. Abascal said it in a more misty way: “We are willing to do whatever is necessary,” which included putting Pedro Sánchez on the bench.
The proposed amnesty law is preparing to pass its first parliamentary procedure this Tuesday amid the predictable and overwhelming shower of attacks from the right, whom the Government's allies unsuccessfully asked to abandon the “hyperbole.” But if the dramatic intensity brought the speeches in Congress of Feijóo and Abascal closer, the session at the same time opened a fracture between the two leaders of the right after the one from Vox disfigured in very unpleasant terms the one from the PP who had joined the criticism against him for having stated in Argentina that “the people will want to hang Sánchez by his feet.”
The President of the Government was absent from the plenary session called to give the green light to the proposed amnesty law, which thus begins its parliamentary process. Sánchez pretexted an interview with King Abdullah of Jordan and European commitments in Strasbourg, which left the ball bouncing for the PP's auction: “Run away from the debate.” To compensate for this, a dozen ministers occupied the blue bench at the beginning of the plenary session, at three in the afternoon, including some who shortly after had to leave to answer questions from the opposition in the Senate.
This first debate was the beginning of a discussion that will last weeks and in which, apparently, it will be difficult to expect any relevant evolution in the arguments of each other. A bid to restore coexistence in Catalonia, proclaim the Government's supporters. A marketing of votes and an attack on the rule of law to perpetuate themselves in power, hammers the right.
The socialist spokesperson, Patxi López, was tasked with defending the proposal and began by amending himself: the amnesty, contrary to what the Government said until half a year ago, is constitutional. López was repeatedly ironic regarding the multitude of occasions in which the PP has proclaimed “Spain is breaking.” He highlighted that measures that “raised a lot of dust” such as the pardons for the independence leaders condemned by the Supreme Court or the abolition of the crime of sedition have made the situation in Catalonia today “incomparably better.” And the amnesty, he stressed, has “more guarantees” because it goes through Congress, it is not a simple power of the Government. Although the PSOE did not have it in its program, López admitted, it is the “essence of democracy” that parties negotiate measures promoted by others to facilitate agreements.
What affects the most is what happens closest. So you don't miss anything, subscribe.
Subscribe
Feijóo barely uttered his first words and the tone of what would be his intervention was set: “National shame” and “international embarrassment.” Then came “fraud”, “political corruption”, “breakdown of coexistence”, “humiliation of the Spanish people”, “democratic regression…” The allusion to 23-F agitated the left-wing benches. Another statement loaded with dynamite went more unnoticed: “You have decided that the guilty are innocent, so now we have no guarantee that you will decide that the innocent are guilty.” López replied that “the saddest day” of Congress was that of the motion of censure against “the most corrupt Government in history”, alluding to that of Mariano Rajoy. The leader of the PP closed his speech in this way: “Even if it bothers the Government, long live democracy! And even if it bothers your partners, long live the Constitution!”
Abascal entered the controversy due to his words in Argentina. He excused himself by saying that “hanging Sánchez by his feet” was a “colloquial expression” and defended himself by showing a photo from 10 years ago of a town in Alicante where socialist militants staged a play that simulated Rajoy's passage through the guillotine. . After the usual attacks, with the usual roar, on Sánchez, Abascal dedicated half of his speech to attacking Feijóo. He accused him of “swindling” the Spaniards for “organizing demonstrations on Sundays and making agreements on Mondays with the socialists and their accomplices.” And things escalated until he mentioned the great bug of the PP leader, his former friendship with a Galician boss: “I have never participated in that lynching against you, but you have run to join the lynching against Vox.”
The Government's allies agreed in the call to the right to put an end to the “hyperbole”, as Gabriel Rufián, of ERC, said, or the “inflamed rhetoric that replaces arguments with exaggerations”, in the words of Mikel Legarda, of the PNV. Aina Vidal, from Sumar, threw a dart at the socialists by remembering that in 2017 her political space did not support the suspension of Catalan autonomy. Vidal criticized the response of the PP Government at that time, which opted “for batons and prisons,” and defended the pardon measure as “a return to politics.” She agreed with Néstor Rego, from the BNG, that the amnesty will not only benefit Catalonia, but, according to them, it will improve the political climate throughout Spain. Jon Iñarritu, from EH Bildu, defined it as a “bold” measure that “does not solve the political conflict, it clears it up in order to resolve the fit or disengagement of Catalonia.”
Josep Maria Cervera, from Junts, undertook the classic historical immersion until 1714 to locate the origins of the secular “absolutism” that, according to him, Catalonia has suffered, whether with dictatorships or democracies. In a clear separation from the Government's speech, he pointed out: “This is not about forgiveness or coexistence, it is about repairing an injustice.” There was no shortage of allusions from the independence supporters to the demand for a self-determination referendum. Rufián was, as usual, the most expressive: “Four years ago, a measure like this was impossible. Oh, friend, what will happen four years from now?
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#announces #battle #instances #block #amnesty