Congress will vote this afternoon on whether to consider the amnesty law. A parliamentary procedure that will predictably go ahead without shocks with the favorable vote of the allied partners of the coalition Government. However, for the people the date is marked in red, as it marks the beginning of the fight against the criminal oblivion for which they plan to use all possible legal and institutional initiatives with the aim of slowing down the rule.
The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, will be the one who will oppose the bill, which will be defended by the socialist Patxi López - who was the only one who signed the bill to register it - in a debate that wait "hard and rough". The intention of the popular president is to underline the seriousness of the amnesty and will urge the president of the Spanish Government to "show face". In fact, Pedro Sánchez will not go to the plenary and will vote electronically, since at that same time he will hold a meeting with the King of Jordan, Abdullah II, to address the situation in Gaza, and then he will move to Strasbourg, where the the next day the plenary session of the European Parliament is held. The populists criticize this absence and consider that the head of the Executive should be the one to explain the law, as they say he did not do so in the investiture debate.
In the PP they expect a "hard Patxi López". With a speech "befitting the radicalism of the convert who had to be forgiven for his past", the popular spokesman, Borja Sémper, said yesterday.
For his part, Feijóo will focus his arguments on the unconstitutionality of the law and mark the profile of the opposition that the PP intends to form in the coming months. Therefore, it aims to demonstrate that the first law of the legislature is not intended to help families or businessmen, but to pardon those accused of corruption and terrorism. And this is, according to the PP, where the European Union can intervene, in which they trust to stop it.
From Genoa they warn that today is only the first step. Then will come the amendments, the debate in the Senate, which the PP will try to delay as much as possible to take it until the end of March. Then the appeals will come before the courts.
According to Sémper, "no parliamentary initiative against this law is ruled out". Among others, they are considering creating a commission of inquiry in the Senate, to clarify issues such as how much the mediator who attended the meeting between the PSOE and Junts is paid.
Socialists are aware that the amnesty law remains controversial and difficult for a large part of their electorate. However, Sánchez trusts that time will prove him right, as happened with the pardons to the imprisoned pro-independence leaders and their "balsamic" effect on the political conflict in Catalonia.
"They are very complicated decisions, complex to explain, but necessary", he alleged yesterday. And, therefore, it will try to pass this page as quickly as possible, without detracting from its relevance. "Of course, the amnesty debate is transcendent for all democracy," he admitted. But he regretted the attempt by the right to "monopolize" the entire legislature with this initiative, which, in his opinion, "does not sympathize with the true concerns of the public". Overcoming the amnesty page, he assured in the presentation of his new book Tierra Firme, will be necessary to "focus our country's energies on the debates that really matter in the 21st century".
Sánchez will have the support of Sumar, who has already announced that he will not present any amendment to the rule, and of the pro-independence parties, who yesterday attacked the position of the popular ones.
The vice-president and spokesman for Junts, Josep Rius, demanded from the PP "that there be no parliamentary filibusterism" like what, he says, have been encountered in the Senate by the populars. For the post-convergent leader, the approval of the amnesty law "is a victory for independence", since it is a "very important law that reverses an unjust situation", and it will go ahead because it has "a solid majority" that supports him.
From the ERC, its spokeswoman, Raquel Sans, bet to oppose "more politics" to the attempts to "boycott" the amnesty by the right and the extreme right", and for this reason her parliamentary group will ask the Senate committee to reconsider its decision to request reports from the General Council of the Judiciary and the General Council of the Prosecutor, to "sabotage the rule". He also advanced that Esquerra reserves the possibility of "presenting amendments to improve the text", if they have a chance of succeeding.
