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The right unites in another block of Colón to oppose the pardons

2021-05-31T17:04:14.622Z


Leaders of PP, Vox and Cs will share a demonstration and the popular ones will collect signatures Leaders of PP, Vox and Ciudadanos, at the Colón demonstration in February 2019 Carlos Rosillo The Columbus block is back. The right returns to the same scene, the central Madrid square of Colón, where the famous demonstration against the government in February 2019 precipitated the call for general elections in April of that year. Leaders of the PP, Vox and Ciudadanos will demonstrate there on Ju


Leaders of PP, Vox and Ciudadanos, at the Colón demonstration in February 2019 Carlos Rosillo

The Columbus block is back. The right returns to the same scene, the central Madrid square of Colón, where the famous demonstration against the government in February 2019 precipitated the call for general elections in April of that year. Leaders of the PP, Vox and Ciudadanos will demonstrate there on June 13 against the pardons to the prisoners of the procés, summoned by a platform promoted by Rosa Díez, former leader of UPyD. The right wing once again presents a united and belligerent front against the Government for its strategy in Catalonia. The popular ones will also collect signatures against the initiative.

The right wing has risen en bloc to try to prevent Pedro Sánchez from pardoning the prisoners of the procés, in the return to the harshest version of the opposition against the Government and the path he has chosen of detente in Catalonia. PP, Cs and Vox once again act as a unitary front to oppose this measure, in all areas: the judicial, with the announcement that pardons will be appealed to the Supreme Court; the political, with initiatives in Congress and other institutions, and the social, now also agitating the mobilization in the street. The three parties will share a demonstration in the same Plaza de Colón in Madrid where they protested two years ago against the start of the negotiation of the Executive with the Government. PP and Cs will try, yes, to avoid the joint photo of "the three rights" from which only Vox benefited.

The parties of the right have raised the tension to the maximum, convinced that the Government has the intention - not even expressly declared - to pardon the imprisoned pro-independence leaders. And the PP, which had decided that it would focus its opposition to pardons in Parliament and in the institutions, has ended up climbing a step in the confrontation with the Executive and surrendering to the strategy of social unrest, in a decision that has raised voices discrepant in the dome. The popular will go to the march on the 13th in Colón dragged by the call promoted by a group of intellectuals and former politicians from their environment and that of Ciudadanos and supported by Vox.

Not only that, but the PP also recovers the strategy that it already launched in 2006 against the Statute. Pablo Casado's party will promote a collection of signatures throughout the country against the forgiveness of the sentence to the pro-independence leaders. "Serena, but firmly, the party that I preside is going to mobilize to collect signatures in the face of these possible pardons," Casado announced yesterday. The popular leader also announced that his formation will present motions in the more than 8,000 town councils of Spain against the initiative. The strategy is for the parties to portray themselves and confirm "if they want to live in a constitutional and democratic nation in which the laws are respected", or if they intend "to continue giving air to some rulers who defy justice and the Constitution to remain in power, ”he said in reference to Sánchez.

Casado's team tries to unlink this initiative from the one developed in 2006 by Mariano Rajoy against the Statute, recognized over time as an error by some leaders of the PP. Among them is the mayor of Badalona (Barcelona) and former president of the party in Catalonia, Xavier García Albiol, who in an interview in EL PAÍS in 2015 stated that in Catalonia “it was not understood and was understood as an attack”. The Genoa leadership defends, however, that its initiative is in line with others that the PP has promoted in recent months, such as the one it carried out against the Celáa Law, and that it has nothing to do with Rajoy's, despite clear reminiscences.

Unlike the petitioning tables, the PP has not promoted the Columbus demonstration, but it will join it. The leadership of the PP will be present at the protest, as confirmed by sources from the popular leadership, although the party has not yet decided how it will go to an act that causes contradictions and would have wanted to avoid. At the moment, it is not decided if Casado will go, but the intention of the popular ones is that they are not portrayed in the same photo with Santiago Abascal, leader of Vox, who has confirmed that he will attend, and with Citizens. The PP has changed its criteria, because at the beginning of the week sources from the dome transmitted that they did not want to take the opposition against the pardons to the streets. The party has been dragged by the call and by the pressure that the other formations on the right did intend to participate. Now,the same sources are justified in that, to the extent that they share the manifesto of the organizers, "the strange thing would have been not to go."

In the dome of the PP there are voices that disagree with the assistance to the march. For some sources in the leadership, the protest is "unnecessary" and also focuses on the territorial challenge, which "is not a strength of the PP", because Abascal's party is dedicated to remembering that the governments of the PP are also responsible for the conflict in Catalonia. These voices consider that, in any case, the PP should avoid coinciding in a common photograph with Vox and Cs, as happened in the Colón demonstration in 2019, because that would give air to the others. "Cs is dead and it is not necessary to resuscitate him", they defend, and at the same time the PP must prevent Vox from taking flight now that it has been touched in Madrid.

In the retina of some leaders it is engraved by fire that the Columbus protest of two years ago did not go well. After the image that Casado, Abascal and Albert Rivera, then leader of Cs, shared as equals, the popular ones sank in the April elections to only 66 seats, to the point that Cs surpassed them with 57 deputies. Vox, who was extra-parliamentary in Colón, won 24 seats after that image.

Ciudadanos is also uncomfortable, but will have representatives at the protest. In 2019, the photo of Colón divided the formation internally and remains controversial for Cs. Arrimadas did not participate in the demonstration then: he officially had a problem with transportation and did not arrive on time. But some leaders, such as the head of the European delegation, Luis Garicano, assured that they did not feel comfortable sharing a photo with Vox. Now, Cs enthusiastically endorses this appointment, although he is still studying whether he will go officially. “The mobilization on the 13th is from civil society, from intellectual leaders who have our respect and support; We understand that the leading role there should be for them and not for parties. We think it is good news that there are beginning to be chain reactions against an intolerable maneuver by the Sánchez government ”,party sources say. Now, Cs will be represented at the highest level because the deputy mayor of Madrid, Begoña Villacís, has announced that she will attend, although it is a "personal initiative of Villacís", they specify in Cs.

The call for the act comes from Unión 78, a platform promoted by former politicians and intellectuals from the PP and Cs environment, among them the former leader of UPyD, Rosa Díez, the former president of the Basque PP María San Gil, the philosopher Fernando Savater and the former socialist deputy Jesus Square. The group was launched a year ago and received support from personalities such as Albert Boadella, Félix Ovejero, Félix de Azúa or Elvira Roca, but until now it had gone unnoticed and its activity is discreet: it has only 3,670 followers on Twitter and the latest time he posted on this social network was a year ago. It is defined as a "constitutionalist" platform that was established due to the "grave concern" that inspired its members by the formation of the coalition government of the PSOE and United We Can.

The announcement of the June 13 demonstration against pardons explains that its intention is “not to passively tolerate the conversion of blackmail into a 'normal' political procedure, as would happen with the granting of pardons to convicted coup plotters who have expressed their express intention to commit a crime. , expressly flouting contrary reports from the Supreme Court and the State Attorney General's Office ”. The organizers warn against an "undemocratic political drift." "We reject the normalization of injustice, the emptying of the Constitution and the attacks on the unity of the Spanish nation and the rule of law," reads the call for the act that will unite the right again in the Plaza de Colón in Madrid against the Government of Pedro Sánchez.


Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-05-31

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