The acting Government of Pedro Sánchez uses the effectiveness of the pardons granted to the leaders of the 2017 process, no matter how controversial and controversial they were in the last legislature, to pave the way for a possible amnesty. An initiative yet to be known but in response to which, once again, the right-wingers put their hands on their heads and Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in harmony with José María Aznar, will call for a large protest act in Madrid on September 24, two days before appearing at the debate on his own investiture as head of the Executive, for which he does not have the necessary parliamentary support.
Taking advantage of the fact that the Supreme Court (TS) has rejected this Thursday the first appeals of the Popular Party and Citizens against these pardons, although without going into the substance of the issue regarding the relevance of these grace measures, the acting Minister of the Presidency, The socialist Félix Bolaños has assured that this is the way to follow “to close wounds” in Catalonia.
Bolaños has shown his total respect for the rulings of all judicial bodies. But, in this specific case, he has also expressed "the Government's satisfaction that the Supreme Court has ratified the total legality of the pardons that we granted in 2021." “These pardons were an important step for coexistence in Catalonia,” he highlighted. “At that moment it was a brave decision, which many people did not understand, but two years later everyone already knows that it was a correct and useful decision, which served for coexistence and for healing wounds in Catalonia,” stressed the Minister. “That is the Government's purpose and that is the path we have in the PSOE,” he admitted. “Coexistence, law, Constitution and definitively closing those wounds that were caused in Catalonia in 2017,” he insisted.
“The PP, when it does not govern, always says that the unity of Spain is at risk,” Bolaños criticized. Now with Pedro Sánchez, and especially given the possibility of him achieving a new investiture as president, when Feijóo's fails, just as almost twenty years ago with José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. “They always do it, it is a very particular, very narrow conception of democracy,” he lamented. And he has expressly addressed the popular leaders: "Does anyone really believe that today, in 2023, there is a greater risk of the breakup of our country, of constitutional bankruptcy, than there was in 2017 when the PP governed, when the Illegal referendums were called and held, and disconnection laws were approved? Does anyone really believe that?”
“If what they say were not so serious, it would sometimes be ridiculous,” Bolaños replied in response to the PP's alarms. “It is evident that this Government has always worked for coexistence, for healing wounds and for normalizing the institutional and social situation in Catalonia. And that's where we are," he stressed. “We are in coexistence, in law, in the Constitution and in healing wounds,” he stated. “That is the objective, the purpose that the Government has,” he defended, in the face of the “preventive demonstrations that are going nowhere,” for which he has blamed Feijóo for “opposing beforehand.”
The acting Minister of the Presidency has described the situation experienced in Catalonia in 2017, under the mandate of Mariano Rajoy in the central Executive, as a “genuine catastrophe”, given “the disastrous and incompetent management carried out by the PP”.
“Aznar, like the PP in general, has been prophesying the end of our country for decades,” he warned. And he has reiterated his position: "Does anyone really believe, including Aznar and Feijóo, that today Spain is at greater risk of breaking up our Constitution and our country than it was in 2017, when the PP governed with so much incompetence?" regarding coexistence in Catalonia?” What Aznar or Feijóo say, he has lamented, “corresponds little or nothing to the reality of our country.” “The problem with the PP is that it does not understand Spain, and it is reciprocal, because Spain does not understand the PP either,” Bolaños concluded.
