Sánchez will replace the crime of sedition with that of aggravated public disorder

"Yes, we are going to do it.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
10 November 2022 Thursday 13:31
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Sánchez will replace the crime of sedition with that of aggravated public disorder

"Yes, we are going to do it." Pedro Sánchez has announced in an interview in La Sexta that the parliamentary groups of the PSOE and United We Can present this Friday in Congress a project to reform the Penal Code that will eliminate the crime of sedition, for which the pro-independence leaders were convicted , for a new criminal type of aggravated public disorder.

The legislative project will have the support of Esquerra and of the absolute majority that makes up the investiture bloc, which is why the President of the Government chooses to finally take this step.

"Tomorrow in Congress we are going to present a legislative initiative to reform the crime of sedition and replace it with a crime that will be more or less comparable to that of other European democracies, such as Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, and also Switzerland," he announced. Sanchez. “Consequently, the penalties for these crimes will be the penalties that are currently cataloged in the criminal codes of European democracies with which we want to identify and appear”, he assured.

Sánchez has argued that he has called for the reform of sedition “always”, but that to address it he needed a sufficient parliamentary majority. “Throughout these last weeks, there are different parliamentary groups that have said that they are willing for us to reform this crime of sedition and rename it, and call it what the main European democracies call it. That is to say, aggravated public disorder, which is what we call it in this bill”, stated the President of the Government.

And he has assured that it is not an imposition of Esquerra. “The independence movement does not ask for a reform of the Penal Code, but for amnesty. Something that the Government is certainly not going to accept and that is not included in the legislation or in the Constitution”, he ruled out.

"We are taking a step forward, of homologation with Europe", insisted Sánchez, who recalled that the crime of sedition in Spain was drafted in 1822, when "military uprisings were taking place". “Fortunately, Spain has changed for the better. Today we belong to an area of ​​freedom, democracy, civil rights such as the European Union. And it is good that Spain takes a definitive step towards standardizing this type of crime with the main European democracies”.

Sánchez recalled that in Germany the crime of sedition was abolished in 1970 and was renamed with a terminology similar to that which will now be registered as a bill. “It is going to be a step forward in homologating the Penal Code to the highest European standards”, he assured. The head of the Executive has warned, in any case, that the State will not be weakened in the face of possible challenges to the Constitution. “On the contrary, because penalties for these crimes are going to be recognized, comparable to the main European democracies,” he assured. And Sánchez has warned, in any case, that Carles Puigdemont "will have to render an account" also before the Spanish justice system. "The crimes that were committed in 2017 continue to be present in our Penal Code, not as crimes of sedition, but as a new type of crime called aggravated public disorder."

In his investiture speech as President of the Government, on January 4, 2020, Pedro Sánchez promised as a legislature objective "to reduce territorial tension through politics and dialogue and begin to overcome the Catalan political contentiousness". That day he announced the creation of a bilateral dialogue table with the Generalitat: "There is a political conflict that we have to resolve, and we are going to put an end to this territorial confrontation," he assured. But always, he warned, "within the constitutional framework." A few days later, in an interview on TVE on January 20 of that year, Sánchez already opened the door for the first time to reform the crime of sedition of the Penal Code for which the procés leaders were convicted. And he justified it: "It is not comparable to the crimes that are contemplated in other European countries."

But he also warned: "You have to go step by step." “It is evident that this entire crisis has shown that we have a Penal Code that does not correspond to the times that Spain has lived through,” he justified, referring to the acceleration of the independence process in 2017, which led to an illegal self-determination referendum. and in a unilateral declaration of independence, after which the Government of Mariano Rajoy applied article 155 of the Constitution in Catalonia, with the support of the PSOE, and finally the Supreme Court ended up condemning nine of the process leaders.

The project to reform sedition gained momentum in September 2020, when Sánchez himself incorporated at the last moment the proposal to review the Criminal Code, to address criminal figures against public order and the Constitution, in the annual regulatory plan that then presented the Government. The Minister of Justice, at that time Juan Carlos Campo, got down to work on the run.

But, finally, Sánchez opted for the path of pardoning the convicted independence leaders – the Council of Ministers approved the clemency measures in June 2021, with the justification of their “public utility” – and kept the reform of sedition. The President of the Government continued to defend the need for this reform, but since then he has always argued that there was no parliamentary majority to endorse it. In the Executive, to begin with, they looked at Esquerra. And so it was until, a couple of weeks ago, Sánchez stopped using this tagline that there was no majority to address the reform of sedition, which is why the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, justified the breaking of the negotiation to renew the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ).

The elevation change to promote what the President of the Government described as "a personal commitment" - the reform of sedition - took place in just one week. On October 21, from Brussels, Sánchez insisted that "as of today" there was still not a sufficient majority to reform the crime of sedition, after Esquerra had already announced that he would not present a complete amendment to the general budget project of the State by 2023. The socialist leader separated both issues –“one thing has nothing to do with the other”-, but reiterated the need to adapt the Spanish Penal Code to the legal system of the European environment. "I think that 2017 left us some lessons of duties and tasks that we have pending in democracy for a long time, 40 years to this part," he defended. “We have a Criminal Code that, in some of the crimes, is not comparable to the main European democracies. And this is not something that politics says, it is what the criminalists themselves say,” he argued. But he insisted that it could not be just "an exercise in theory", but that to make it a reality, broad support was needed in the Cortes Generales. “We have to see if we have that parliamentary support. To this day, it doesn't look like we have them,” he assured. "The Government will comply, if there is a parliamentary majority," he settled.

Less than a week later, on October 27, and this time from Pretoria (South Africa), Sánchez insisted on defending the reform of sedition, while summoning Feijóo to seal an agreement for the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary that, as he assured, "is ready." For the first time, in any case, the Prime Minister no longer added, as he had been doing until then, that he still did not see a sufficient parliamentary majority willing to endorse a reform of the crime of sedition.

Instead, Sánchez stressed that "the situation in Catalonia is much better than in October 2017", when the illegal referendum on self-determination and the unilateral declaration of independence of Catalonia took place. "Therefore, in the process of overcoming a political crisis that led us to an absolutely unprecedented situation in the forty years of democracy, it has to be resolved through political channels," he defended. "It must be resolved through political channels," he insisted, referring to the agenda for dejudicialization of the political conflict in Catalonia that the Government is debating with the Generalitat at the dialogue table. "That's what the Government of Spain is up to," he said.

“One of the main lessons that we have to draw from the situation that Spain experienced, so dramatic, of disagreement, of bankruptcy, in 2017, is the need to standardize some types of crime in our Penal Code to the European context to which we belong”, Sánchez settled that day from Pretoria. A few hours later, Alberto Núñez Feijóo dynamited the negotiations, almost finished, for the judicial agreement of the PP with the Government.