The Government has accepted with notable disgust the interpretation that the Supreme Court (TS) has made of its penal reform to try to defuse the political conflict in Catalonia, despite issuing its public respect for the judicial ruling that also questions the suppression of the crime of sedition . The minister spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, has assured this Tuesday, in any case, that the Executive "defends that there are tools in politics that avoid the events that occurred in 2017 in Catalonia."
“With the dialogue we have managed to normalize institutional relations, we have managed to recover affection between Catalans and improve coexistence for all. And we don't want to look back, just as Catalonia doesn't want to go back either. We must avoid judicialization of political problems”, stressed the government spokesperson.
The Executive does not share at all the interpretation of the TS that the latest penal reform, with the elimination of sedition and the reform of embezzlement, leaves the State unprotected or opens "spaces of impunity", in case it occurs again in the future an acceleration of the independence process like the one registered in 2017, with the approval of the disconnection laws, the illegal self-determination referendum and the unilateral declaration of independence. "Of course, the State has legal instruments, as has been seen, for when it happens to address them from the judicial sphere," replied the minister spokesperson. Among these instruments is article 155 of the Constitution or the Penal Code, despite its latest reform.
"The Spanish State is protected by its legal system, but political problems must be resolved from politics," Isabel Rodríguez insisted. In 2017, under the mandate of Mariano Rajoy, "it could not be avoided", she highlighted. "But we have recomposed that situation and we want Spain and Catalonia to look to the future," the spokeswoman defended.
Once again making a virtue of necessity, Isabel Rodríguez has assured that the decision of the TS "responds to what the Government has maintained throughout all this time, and that is that there has not been a decriminalization of the facts, they continue to exist penalties and sentences, and justice must be fulfilled in our country”. "The fundamental thing is that fortunately, thanks to the work, the effort and the dialogue tool that the Government has launched, we have achieved that what was previously a political conflict that crossed borders reaching the judicial sphere, today is on the path of coexistence”, he defended.
Preserving the policy of dialogue and détente of the Government of Pedro Sánchez would thus be the best way to prevent the events of 2017 from repeating themselves in Catalonia. "I do not think that it is possible to return to that scenario," said Isabel Rodríguez. “Fundamentally due to a circumstance that is nothing minor, and that is that Catalan society has also evolved in that direction. And today Catalonia does not want to go back. The Catalans do not want to go back to the Catalonia of 2017”, confided the spokesperson for the Executive. "And those who have the responsibility of government in Catalonia, either", she has settled, referring to Esquerra Republicana.
