With an atmosphere, a staging and a mobilization of cadres typical of an electoral campaign -the municipal ones are just around the corner... and then the general ones will come-, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has shown his chest this Sunday in Barcelona his management of the Catalan folder and has vindicated his reunion agenda, with the reform of the Criminal Code that is being processed in the Congress of Deputies as a backdrop.
"It's been a while since the Socialists decided to rescue Catalonia from the conflict and return it to coexistence," said the head of the Executive at the Palau de Congressos de Barcelona this Sunday, in the act of supporting Jaume Collboni as a candidate for mayor of the capital catalan "That disputes are resolved in the field of politics and not in the courts. And if where there was tension today there is coexistence, it is because there is a government that is committed to reunion," Sánchez added.
"It is a first-rate political decision, to rescue Catalonia from tension and confrontation. They are risky decisions, but there is no other, there is no other way. Political confrontation must be removed from the courts," he insisted.
The head of the central Executive has assured that "they work hard for coexistence and harmony", a message that has been reinforced by all those who have intervened in the act this Sunday in the Catalan capital, Collboni, the municipal policy secretary of the PSC, Lluissa Moret, and the first secretary of the Catalan socialists, Salvador Illa "We are committed to the reunion to guarantee that Catalonia and Spain will never again live those sad days of 2017", the PSOE general secretary also added.
The words of the President of the Government have as context the reform of the Penal Code, with which, among other issues, the crime of sedition will foreseeably be repealed and the definition of the crime of embezzlement will be modified.
The objective of Esquerra Republicana and Junts per Catalunya is to recover previous wordings of the articles or similar ones so that the pro-independence leaders who have not yet been tried are not sentenced to prison terms for the organization of the 1-O referendum and that they can be review the sentences of those already convicted; but the Socialists have been cautious and prudent about the ERC plans and will present some modifications this Monday for a new type of embezzlement that penalizes irregular budgetary deviation within the same public administration, according to La Vanguardia. The reform faces the processing of the amendments in commission and those that the Republicans registered on Friday were the result of conversations with the PSOE, although there was no final agreement closed.
This initiative would also reduce sentences for 1-O, but avoids the decriminalization that Esquerra seeks. A maximum of four years in prison and six years of disqualification will be set. In this way, the maximum applicable penalty is lowered, which time is set at six years and ten of disqualification for embezzlement.
The leader of the Socialists has also referred to the economic agenda and has assured that Spain is the country that "grows the most, with the lowest inflation and with an employment rate that we have not seen in the last 15 years and in Catalonia coexistence prevails" , for which he has reproached the opposition for his attack. "And what does the opposition say about it? That we are in a dictatorship," Sánchez made them ugly. "The April Fools for December 28", he continued.
"They say that Spain is sinking, but what is sinking is the catastrophic discourse of the right and the ultra-right, let us work," stressed the leader of the PSOE.
Illa, in her speech, has reproached the independence movement for not having a dialogue between Catalans and has contrasted it with the dialogue between governments, between Moncloa and the Generalitat. As Moret and Collboni, the leader of the PSC and former Minister of Health, have also done, they have vindicated the PSC as an alternative to the right and to the independence movement in their speeches.
The also head of the opposition in the Parliament has praised the management of the Catalan folder of the central government, of which he was part until the regional elections of 2021, and the reform of PSOE and UP to circumvent the blockade of the conservatives in the renewal of the judiciary and the courts. It is in this context that he wanted to throw a dart at the PP. "From now on the lessons of patriotism and constitutionalism are going to be given by the Socialists. What have they believed? The Constitution is fully complied with!" he exclaimed. "I am saying this from a part of Spain that has suffered an attack I am serious about the Constitution, I am talking about something serious", concluded the leader of the PSC, who has used a formulation similar to the one used by Jordi Pujol in May 1984 after his re-election as president of the Generalitat, with the complaint by Banca Catalana of background. "All generosity, none ingenuity," Illa has sentenced.
