What came first: the chicken or the egg? The leader of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, has a clear answer for this seemingly unsolvable dilemma: if it had not been for the pardons, there would be no amnesty now.
Yesterday, on the same day that the political spotlight was directed towards Geneva, where the PSOE and Junts held their first meeting under the supervision of an international verifier, the republicans convened a national council to claim that without the "prior work" that they played a role in, the law that Congress is processing and that proposes to forget the crimes related to the independence process from 2012 and until 2023 would not have seen the light of day.
"In recent years we have battled and fought against repression and to get those who were in prison out, to reform the Penal Code and to limit the repressive tools that the State has used against our country", exclaimed Junqueras before of his
"We are convinced that all this we have done is what has made it possible to open the way to amnesty and take it for granted", replied the president of ERC, who spent three and a half years in prison for his participation, as vice-president of the Government chaired by Carles Puigdemont, in the organization of the referendum of October 1, 2017, declared illegal by the Spanish judiciary.
Six years after that date, the path of Junts per Catalunya, a party that Puigdemont has again placed on the path of the pact following Pedro Sánchez's need for his seven votes in Congress to be re-elected president of the Spanish Government, has bifurcated from the ERC, which runs the Generalitat alone and in a precarious parliamentary minority for the first time since the Second Republic. Hence, apart from the amnesty, which will also benefit the republicans, especially its general secretary, Marta Rovira, who has been living in Switzerland since the failure of the fleeting unilateral declaration of independence, Junqueras' speech focused on highlight ERC's government action.
With President Pere Aragonès returning from his official trip to South Korea, the Republican leader, who remains disqualified from holding public office, emphasized that his training has worked both from the Catalan Government and from Congress "for the day to day the vast majority of society", an argument that was exemplified by the negotiation of increases in the minimum wage and pensions in the last legislature, when Junts systematically refused to collaborate with the central government and, more recently, with the achievement of 'an agreement to reduce Catalonia's high - and unpayable - debt.
Although he glossed over the "historical record in investments, exports and employment", Junqueras did not let himself be carried away by triumphalism and denounced the "fiscal deficit of almost 3,000 euros per capita" which prevents Catalonia from "having all the tools that they have the states", which is why the objective of independence, this time after "fighting for a self-determination referendum" agreed, remains valid: it is "money that comes out of the pockets and does not return to Catalonia". "We are convinced that being a republic would provide us with more resources to improve the lives of citizens", he said.
