The fearful Feijóo and the sedition

Pablo Casado would not have presided over the PP without the unilateral declaration of independence in 2017.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
29 October 2022 Saturday 22:32
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The fearful Feijóo and the sedition

Pablo Casado would not have presided over the PP without the unilateral declaration of independence in 2017. Not only because the Catalan crisis favored the motion of censure that displaced Mariano Rajoy, but also because Casado's election in the party's primaries was the result of internal unrest hatched by those who considered that the former president had behaved like a coward in the face of the independence challenge. Casado's fiasco opened the way for Alberto Núñez Feijóo, whose mission was to turn the PP's course. But the leader has shown this week the enormous difficulty in getting rid of the Catalan influence. The discourse on the rupture of Spain is the sustenance on which the right is nourished. He fattened up Vox and keeps the PP emotionally gripped.

Casado won the match as a counterpoint to Rajoy. That is why he obtained the support of Dolores de Cospedal, champion in the Government of a greater forcefulness against the independence movement. This is how Casado defeated Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría and, already as leader of the PP, served as a scourge of sanchismo-ally-of-separatists-and-filoetarras. But the formula did not work and Casado fell victim to an internal blow. Feijóo arrived with the best credentials and the will to return to the PP the patina of a ruling party. Hence, his initial intention –and that of one of his main collaborators, Esteban González Pons– was to agree on the renewal of the judicial leadership. In the end, he has succumbed to the pressure of a right wing that has embraced nationalist rhetoric and anti-system ways, which uses pacts with the independence movement as an argument to delegitimize the president.

But let's recap. The reform of the crime of sedition was set as a condition by ERC to allow the processing of State budgets. The Republicans fear that, if they do not tighten now that they have the key to the accounts, Sánchez will disregard that commitment. They want to encourage the escaped leaders to return, especially their general secretary, Marta Rovira. The reform would also allow those pardoned, starting with Oriol Junqueras, to return to institutional politics, since the disqualification that affects them would be lowered. The sentences, which now range between 8 and 15 years, could be substantially reduced, between 2 and 6 years (although it is far from decided) and even eliminate the name of sedition by another definition, as is the case in countries where reference is made to the breach or disturbance of the authority or constitutional bodies.

This reform would not completely resolve the situation of other republican leaders such as Josep Maria Jové or Lluís Salvadó, pending trial and accused of embezzlement. ERC would like this crime to be reformed, punishable by imprisonment, but the Government, today, does not contemplate that possibility. The case of Carles Puigdemont is more complicated, since the two accusations weigh on him, for sedition and for embezzlement.

When ERC made this condition, Moncloa warned that mixing budgets with penal reform was the fastest way to knock it down. The Republicans drafted a statement in which they gave the green light to the discussion of the accounts, but made the final approval conditional on "dejudicialization." That note never saw the light of day. It was replaced by another, more prudent, that announced the yes to the procedure to "create the conditions that allow the ongoing negotiations to be kept open." Without specifying whether they were referring to economic items or criminal reform. But ERC is adamant that, short of the sedition downgrade, it will not support the bills when they are voted on in Congress on November 24.

That condition has been the fuse used by a sector of the PP to pressure Feijóo and prevent the pact to renew the Judicial Power, despite the initial attempt of his collaborators to separate both issues. The leader of the PP had made a whole journey of rectification of the previous Numantine positions. In the negotiations he had given up vetoing United We Can. The purples did not sit down to negotiate, but the PP knew that two of the elected members of the CGPJ must be to the liking of UP. Feijóo had also assumed that the majority of the body would be progressive and had admitted Cándido Conde-Pumpido as president of the Constitutional Court. He had negotiated with the PSOE that a two-year period would be established in which judges holding political office could not return to the judiciary (at first he asked for five years), as could happen with ministers such as Pilar Llop or Margarita Robles. And the list of names for the CGPJ was ready. Until everything exploded into the air.

Sánchez insists on reforming the sedition because he needs great support in Catalonia and options to repeat the current parliamentary majority. Feijóo has also made his bet. The PP will continue to be anchored in the scarecrow of the imminent risk of a fracture in Spain. He has already promised to aggravate a crime whose sentences reach 15 years. The problem is that in this way it is easy to go from being a moderate to being considered a timid person, as happened to Rajoy.