In view of the schedule of decisions by Judge Manuel García-Castellón always in line with the political and parliamentary negotiation of the Amnesty law, as La Vanguardia reveals today, the PSOE leadership is already openly talking about judicial interference in the legislative action. . “Judicial decisions have a very clear objective,” say socialist sources. “The mere fact that the judiciary acts at the mercy of the legislature to try to influence the law is already horrible and inadmissible. The times of the judiciary are empirically aligned with those of politics and the legislature. Be it one way or another, every time the legislature makes a move, a judge makes a move,” Ferraz denounces.
The new spokesperson for the PSOE, Esther Peña, criticized this Monday the protest against the amnesty that the leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, championed last Sunday in Madrid. The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, assured in this demonstration that in Catalonia, in the heat of the independence process, terrorism crimes occurred. “We are already used to Ayuso's eccentricities,” Peña lamented. “It is evident that the independence movement, at the time, used reprehensible strategies, but we believe that this is not terrorism,” the socialist spokesperson alleged.
“In this country we know very well what terrorism is, from ETA, from Grapo, from the GAL, from Terra Lluire, from 11-M or the terrorism of the extreme right that murdered the Atocha lawyers. It is in everyone's collective memory,” Peña argued. “But no one who does not want to use terrorism again to gain political advantage can say something like that about what happened in Catalonia in 2019,” she stressed.
24 hours before the Amnesty law is voted on in the plenary session of Congress, for submission to the Senate if it is approved as planned, the PSOE spokesperson has not ruled out that more changes may be introduced, as demanded by Junts and ERC. “Right now there is no change on the table in the position of the PSOE regarding the voting on the amendments with respect to what came out of the Justice commission last week,” she assured. “At this point, we are satisfied and comfortable with the text that came out of the committee last week. And right now, there is no change,” she insisted, putting the emphasis on “right now.” “What there is is time,” Peña warned. “Evidently, the parties are still talking, and until the vote is held tomorrow afternoon there is only time,” she stressed. Without completely closing the door, therefore, to new changes in the rule, as the Government already did last week in response to the latest rulings by Judge García-Castellón.
In any case, Peña has called on Feijóo to clarify whether, in his opinion, the far-right protests that continue to take place at the gates of Ferraz would also be considered terrorism. “Terrorism is criminalized in Spanish legislation,” he alleged. But he has expressed his concern that the PP, “to denigrate and denigrate” the Amnesty law, is capable of “entering into such a sensitive issue and putting on the table issues that are very distant,” such as terrorism.
“We Spaniards know well what terrorism is,” Peña assured. And she has stressed that for the PSOE what continues to happen many nights at the gates of Ferraz is not terrorism, “however unpleasant and undesirable” it may be. Nor was it terrorism, he added, the “neighbors' revolt” in the Burgos neighborhood of Gamonal in 2014, nor the protests of the miners or shipyard workers that have occurred in Asturias or Cádiz in past years. .
