Pedro Sánchez, acting president of Spain, assured yesterday in New York, during his visit to the UN General Assembly, that "the conversations may be discreet, but the agreements are transparent."
This is how he responded to Oriol Junqueras, leader of ERC, and his statement that the amnesty has already been negotiated. He apparently didn't get wet. He didn't even mention the word amnesty, but his responses implied that it is possible and that he is open to negotiating with Carles Puigdemont, whose Junts deputies are key to moving forward with his investiture.
“We have always respected the work of justice. But I also say, and I have commented, that a political crisis never had to lead to judicial action and judicialization. Although there have been several twists and turns, he assured that the newspaper library supports him. “When the president was Mariano Rajoy, and I was the leader of the opposition, at the time when the prosecutor (José Manuel) Maza, now deceased, opened the door to all these judicial cases through the National Court, I transferred my discomfort to Mr. Rajoy,” he stressed.
“It was a conflict that had political roots,” he insisted. “What we have done during these years, with enormous effort and absolute incomprehension of those who governed Spain when this crisis occurred, has been to try to return to politics what never had to leave politics,” he explained.
He accepted that unilateralism is a “debate in which it is still unfortunately incorporated into part of the independence movement.” But he asked: “How many people in Catalonia support unilateralism?” And he responded: “It is measured, it is public, the Catalan CEO says so, between 10% and 11%. I think there are 90% of Catalan citizens who tell us that what they want is dialogue, reunion, coexistence and harmony. Of course, that is where the government of Spain is going to be.”
He continued that “if we want to appeal to the majority to transcend and turn the page, what we have to do is look at that 90%. So, without talking about amnesty or a future government, he appealed to his work in recent years. “I told them that we will be consistent with what we have done,” he explained.
“I see five years in which only apocalyptic prophecies are poured out that are never fulfilled. What if Spain breaks, what if it sinks, what if the Spanish nation feels attacked in its essence. Nothing is fulfilled,” he remarked.
“We took the reins of the country in 2018, a society traumatized by a tear, that of 2017, an institutional and constitutional crisis such as had not been experienced in the last 40 years and the results are visible today. Catalan society has said yes to the reunion policy that the Government of Spain has promoted for four years, taking risky decisions, often misunderstood, I understand, but which have effectively led us to a situation of stabilization and normalization of what that happens and that Catalan society enjoys,” he said.
“Those who were incapable and powerless in the face of this constitutional crisis are the ones who hold me responsible, for what? Having stabilized Catalonia? That today the first political force in Catalonia is a constitutional force? That Salvador Illa is closer to being president of the Generalitat? “The Spanish right must learn some lessons from the July 23 elections.”
He maintained at the start that this was the moment of Alberto Núñez Feijóo and his fake attempt at investiture, that “not even he believes it.” So little credible that the popular leader Isabel Díaz Ayuso (she did not say her name) is already demanding that he call elections.
“I'm saying a lot,” he acknowledged before returning to the UN headquarters.
