The Catalan conflict has contributed to overcoming or weakening several presidents of the Government in recent years. Zapatero left Moncloa impelled by the tsunami of the financial crisis, but the Catalan tripartite persistently complicated his passage through the position. Rajoy was expelled by a motion of censure whose fuse was the Gürtel case, but which would not have gone ahead without the support of the independence movement, the great constitutional crisis of his mandate. Pedro Sánchez has always shown a courage that led him to pardon convicted leaders with polls overwhelmingly against him. Accustomed to walking the wire, he is sure that eliminating sedition will not take its toll.
As soon as the decision to suppress crime and create an aggravated type of public disorder with maximum sentences of five years was known, two socialist barons raised their voices. The most forceful was Emiliano García-Page from La Mancha. The Aragonese Javier Lambán also protested, something more restrained. But the Extremaduran Guillermo Fernández Vara or the Andalusian Juan Espadas remained within the official canons. The tidal wave was greater when the pardons were announced, with Felipe González at the forefront of the discontent, despite the fact that the decision is now made just six months before municipal and regional elections.
Sánchez believes that the wear and tear that this matter could cause him is already discounted, taking into account that the debate has been on the table, with more or less critical moments, throughout the legislature. He believes that Spanish society will understand it for the most part, as happened with the pardons, even if it does not fully share it or it dislikes it. In addition, in Moncloa they do not expect very visible immediate effects. His calculations – consulting jurists involved – are that Oriol Junqueras, for example, would not arrive in time to see his disqualification commuted from standing in the Catalan elections, although the application of the legal changes will be in the hands of the judges of the Supreme.
It helps the PSC defend the policy of "deflation" and the "reunion agenda" promised by Sánchez. Salvador Illa trusts that he will push him even further at the polls by accrediting himself with the will to appease the conflict. He also breathes oxygen into ERC in his strategy of dialogue with the Government against Junts, a formation that has been misplaced. Once out of the Generalitat, as Carles Puigdemont defended, Junts' strategy is based on the dialogue getting bogged down in a resounding way. Perhaps that will happen later, but Junts may find it long to wait in the institutional environment.
The reaction of the PP has been textbook, although Alberto Núñez Feijóo has appealed to the "moral duty" of the socialist barons and has warned that he will recover the corrected and increased sedition as a crime. But he has also avoided outbursts or gimmicky hyperbole reminiscent of his predecessor. If anything, the most innovative thing has been the scenery, an "institutional declaration" without questions together with the Spanish and European flags to solemnize the figure of the presidential candidate. If Feijóo fell into the temptation of overreacting in this matter, he could give Vox wings, as already happened in the most effervescent times of the procés.
Sánchez hopes that eliminating sedition will not have an electoral cost. What's more, he claims to be the first president to fencing in a campaign to have appeased the separatist rage. That is not easy in a country in which the territorial conflict has been used for years as an electoral weapon. And perhaps he will ensure that Catalonia does not take its toll on him, although another much less epic phenomenon can do so: inflation.
