Despite all the difficulties in the relationship between Moncloa and the Generalitat or between the PSOE and the ERC, the president of the Republicans, Oriol Junqueras, is determined to keep the dialogue table alive to resolve the Catalan conflict. And that weighs on the fact that Pedro Sánchez "always makes excuses" to gather around her, according to the leader of Esquerra, because doing so implies for the Spanish Executive to recognize that there is a political conflict. Thus, Junqueras has urged not to abandon that space for negotiation and has assured that "the last thing" that the independence movement would have to do "is save a table that bothers" the Government.
ERC today recalled the pardons that the Government of Sánchez granted a year ago to the nine pro-independence leaders convicted of 1-O. Some pardons that from different political environments indicate that they were the fruit of precisely the dialogue between the two parties.
The small-format event at its headquarters in Barcelona has not adopted a tone of celebration, but rather one of vindication and defense of independence ideas. "Today's act is to denounce the repression, but also to claim freedom, amnesty and self-determination", said Carme Forcadell, who has participated together with Dolors Bassa, Raül Romeva and Oriol Junqueras, as well as Marta Rovira from Geneva , all of them emphasizing that this measure of grace is partial and reviewable, and that their freedom is "conditional". The pardon was applied for prison sentences related to convictions of sedition and embezzlement, but not for disqualification from any public office, in addition to being conditioned not to commit any crime between the following three and six years.
Rovira, number two of the republican formation, in a similar line to that of his president, has considered that the pardons "are a first step", but completely insufficient to face the conflict. And it has made Sánchez ugly that he keeps it frozen: “He promised to resolve the political conflict, but today we do not know if he is self-conscious or does not believe in democratic standards or does not have enough courage” to establish himself as an alternative to the “more runaway” right . For ERC, the dialogue table is the only solution "to repression", which, according to him, is what causes the demobilization of the independence movement.
“We know that the government would like to save the negotiating table”, Junqueras underlined, which is why he considered that if the independence movement abandoned it, it would lose political capital. The ERC leader has asserted that the international community asks the sovereigntism "constantly to negotiate." “The more we demonstrate it and the less the State demonstrates it, the more political capital we will accumulate in the eyes of this international community”, he added before stressing that “we must build the necessary complicities to make a referendum possible so that citizens vote for their independence ”.
Bassa has applauded the pardons, but without enthusiasm. “We have always had a sword on us”, he has affirmed in relation to the reviewable nature of the measure of grace. "Most of us would have returned to the world of education, or perhaps to politics (...) of an institutional nature," he said. The former Minister has pointed out, as well as Raül Romeva, that there are still people repressed in 32 courts and 29 different cases. Bassa has vindicated himself: “We continue to denounce the repression and stand up for it. With clear and firm convictions. We did not come from silence, nor will we return to silence. Neither silence, nor hiding, head held high and always present here”.
