"It's all right!" Everyone in Moncloa and in the direction of the PSOE clamor. Almost twenty years ago, since José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero assumed the presidency of the Government in 2004, the Socialists have been enduring the insistent accusation from the right that they intend to break up Spain, blow up national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and liquidate the Constitution of 1978. Always with the same argument: “ETA and Catalonia”. A recurring criticism has also been directed against Pedro Sánchez since he became head of the Executive in 2018, even from some sectors of the PSOE, and who is now again suffering intensely due to the open negotiations with the Catalan and Basque independence movement to achieve a new investiture, once that of the leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, fails at the end of this month of September.
"The right is trying to intimidate the Spanish, as it has always done when the socialists govern, and it is saying that the apocalypse is going to come," insisted this Wednesday the acting Minister of the Presidency, the socialist Félix Bolaños, before the forceful Right-wing reaction through dialogue and negotiation opened by Pedro Sánchez to try to achieve a new investiture as President of the Government, after the speech that Carles Puigdemont gave yesterday from Brussels, by demanding as a condition an amnesty law for all those indicted for the process in Catalonia of 2017.
“What the Socialists are going to do is what we have done these last five years of the government of Pedro Sánchez, who have endorsed the ballot boxes, and what we have always done when the Socialists have governed, which is to bet on coexistence, comply with the Constitution , enforce the Constitution, ensure that there is more affection among the Spanish and, of course, build dialogue, greater territorial cohesion and, of course, try to definitively heal the wounds of the Catalonia of 2017”, Bolaños replied.
The acting minister and leader of the PSOE has insisted that this is now, as always, the purpose of the Socialists. "Of course, always within the Constitution and the law," he warned. "There we are going to work with all the parliamentary groups, in due course, to achieve a majority that guarantees the investiture of Pedro Sánchez as president and that our country continues to progress and advance," he stressed.
Bolaños has avoided assessing whether, after listening to Puigdemont's demands the day before, he now sees Sánchez's investiture as closer and more feasible, or whether they are willing to promote an Amnesty bill in Congress immediately, to comply with the demands of the former president of the Generalitat. “Now is the time, because that is what the King commissioned, from candidate Feijóo,” he alleged. “Now is the time for him to do his job, and we are already seeing it. Today in Murcia you can see who the PP's ally is. The right and the extreme right are the same, an ultra coalition,” he criticized, given the government pact signed between the PP and Vox in this region.
The socialist leader has reiterated that the acting second vice president of the Government, Yolanda Díaz, met last Monday with Puigdemont in Brussels in her capacity as leader of Sumar. “Our working method is different,” she warned. The PSOE's method, he has assured, is based on "discretion", and on giving explanations to citizens "once agreements have been made." “It is a method that has proven absolutely effective and successful in recent years,” he defended.
Bolaños has also responded to the criticism of Felipe González, who the day before warned Sánchez against the path he is taking to achieve a new investiture, and flatly rejected that an Amnesty law, as well as a self-determination referendum, fit into the Spanish Constitution. . “What we are doing in the PSOE is absolutely consistent with the best socialist tradition,” he assured.
“Whenever we have been in the Government we have worked for coexistence, for the Constitution, for affection between citizens, for territorial cohesion. And we are going to continue doing so in the near future”, Bolaños has settled, trying to neutralize, once again, the suspicions and fears installed in some sectors of the PSOE.
