The president of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, stated this Saturday that the amnesty "is not an end point in the process of national liberation" of Catalonia but "quite the opposite", since it represents "one more and essential step" towards independence .
At a party event in Igualada (Barcelona) to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the unilateral referendum of October 1, 2017, Junqueras has vindicated the path of negotiation with the Government tried by ERC in the last legislature, as he has stressed: "The traveled path we could not have avoided". He has assured that if today the amnesty can be "taken for granted" for those prosecuted for the independence process, it is because a pardon was previously approved for the leaders in prison and because the Penal Code was modified to suppress sedition and lower the penalties. penalties for embezzlement.
Thus, he has maintained that "amnesty is a necessary condition to be able to defend the right to self-determination, to be able to freely exercise - and in the best possible conditions and with essential international recognition - the right to decide." This is, he specified, "one more tool on the path to being able to democratically decide the future of our country", since the right to self-determination is "inalienable." "We neither can nor do we want to renounce the right to self-determination (...) Self-determination and democracy is the only path we consider," he elaborated.
Junqueras's intervention took place after this Friday Junts and ERC redoubled their pressure on Sánchez by approving in Parliament a resolution to condition his investiture to setting the conditions for holding a referendum - in addition to the aforementioned amnesty -, a position that the PSC has already categorically ruled it out.
At another point in his speech, Junqueras insisted on the path of dialogue with the State, since, even if it does not respond to the demands of the independence movement, this will have served to obtain the "recognition" of the international community. , which repeatedly asks "not to leave the negotiating table."
On the sixth anniversary of 1-O, the president of ERC has vindicated that vote and has committed to "giving continuity to that fight and making that fight triumph with international recognition, which is essential." "We will not give up defending all democratic rights and one of the most fundamental: the right to vote", he concluded.
