“It is a first level political decision, to rescue Catalonia from tension and confrontation. They are risky decisions, but there is no other, there is no other way. We must remove the political confrontation from the courts”. With an atmosphere, a staging and a mobilization of cadres typical of an electoral campaign -the municipal elections are just around the corner... and then the general ones will come-, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, yesterday in Barcelona puffed out his management of the Catalan folder, and claimed his "reunion agenda" in a Palau de Congressos in Barcelona to overflowing with militants -more than 2,500, according to socialist sources-, 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", highlighted the head of the central Executive in the act of support for Jaume Collboni, the first in which he supported the Socialist candidate for mayor of the Catalan capital in the pre-campaign In addition, he assured that "they work hard for harmony", a message that was launched by all those who spoke from the stage -Collboni, the municipal policy secretary of the PSC, Lluïssa 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," insisted the also general secretary of the PSOE, who exhibited the strategic investments in Catalonia on the economic side or the connection to transport hydrogen between Barcelona and Marseille, something that, according to what he said, "would not have been possible in the Catalonia of 2017." "If today they are possible, it is because there is a government that is committed to the reunion," he concluded.
The words of the President of the Government have as context the reform of the Criminal Code, with which, among other things, the crime of sedition will foreseeably be repealed and the criminalization of embezzlement will be modified. The legal changes face today the processing of the amendments in the Justice commission and on Thursday they will be definitively approved.
The objective of Esquerra and Junts is to recover previous drafting 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 the penalties of those already convicted; but the Socialists are 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, as La Vanguardia advanced yesterday.
The initiative of PSOE and Unidas Podemos would reduce the penalties for 1-O, but avoids the decriminalization that ERC pursues. A maximum of four years in prison and six years of disqualification will be set for this type of embezzlement instead of the current six years in prison and ten years of disqualification.
The leader of the Socialists also referred to the economic agenda and 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", to which he added that "in Catalonia prevails coexistence”. For this reason, he reproached the opposition forces, on the right and the ultra-right, for their attacks. “And what does the opposition say about it? That we are in a dictatorship”, Sánchez made them ugly. The right “says that Spain is sinking”. “What is sinking is his catastrophic discourse. They have not yet accepted that they lost the elections. They to their ravings and we to the facts, ”the head of the Executive settled.
