The elimination of the crime of sedition and its replacement by another of aggravated public disorder passed the first parliamentary process last week in a debate that ended after midnight.
The second surpassed it this Thursday - again with a very comfortable support, 185 deputies - at lunchtime, with the empty blue bench and an almost deserted hemicycle until the moment of voting.
The deadline for presenting amendments will close next week and the forecasts of the Government and its allies are to prepare the text in a hurry to approve it before the end of the year and send it to the Senate.
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A Penal Code without sedition in exchange for sentences of three to five years for those who attack public order in a group
The proposal of the two government parties —which will soften the judicial processes still open against some pro-independence leaders— was admitted for processing after a tense debate that ended late on Friday the 25th. The next step was to debate the amendments to the entire , in which the opposition right-wing and the most irreducible independence movement, Junts and the CUP, coincided for radically opposite reasons.
The rush of the Executive led to convening an extraordinary plenary session this Thursday after the end of the weekly ordinary, which began after two in the afternoon.
The emergencies aroused protests from the right.
"How annoying are the legislative procedures, how much it bothers them to account for the Penal Code," criticized the popular Carlos Rojas, who also censured the absence of members of the Government "in a debate of such importance."
Inés Arrimadas, from Ciudadanos, and the Navarrese regionalist Sergio Sayas even maintained that they had purposely sought to coincide with the Spain-Japan World Cup match, scheduled for five hours later.
This last complaint gave rise to the deputy of ERC Carolina Telechea to ironize: "They are right, the plenary session and the party have agreed so that the issue is not discussed in Spain or Japan."
At the time of the debate, the majority of the deputies had already gone to eat, once the voting of the previous ordinary plenary session had finished.
Of the Government, not a trace.
Some groups also lowered the rank of the deputies elected to defend their positions, unlike the first debate.
In the PP, the spokesperson, Cuca Gamarra, handed over the baton to Rojas, his
number two,
and in ERC Gabriel Rufián delegated to Telechea.
Only Ciudadanos put their leader, Arrimadas, in the fray.
Like a week ago, the PP unsuccessfully tried to open fissures in the socialist ranks.
"Break the voting discipline out of respect for your country and your voters," Rojas urged them.
In the first attempt, the popular had demanded the vote by appeal, that is, by voice and one by one of the deputies.
So the response was that all the socialists stood up in unison when they called the first parliamentarian from that group.
This time, with the usual electronic voting, the closing of ranks was staged by a standing ovation from the entire group —the majority had already returned to vote— when the intervention of his colleague Felipe Sicilia, who had responded to the attacks, ended. of the PP: "You prefer the Catalonia of 2017 to the current one, that of division and confrontation, because it is like that, in the tension,
The group of opponents of the reform could not be more heterogeneous and their reasons more opposed.
On the one hand, the opposition: the PP and Ciudadanos proposed to leave the crime as it is, and in the case of the latter formation, it was suggested to also introduce a new one of "improper rebellion" when the "threat of violence" mediates.
Vox intended to aggravate the penalties provided and also introduce one more crime, that of treason.
On the other, Junts and the CUP advocated eliminating it completely and argued that the new classification of public disorder will allow what they describe as the "criminalization" of the independence movement and citizen protest to continue.
As all the amendments contained alternative texts they were voted on separately.
That of the PP achieved the support of the entire right.
The popular ones abstained in the one of Vox,
The debate came after a very tense morning in Congress, due to the constant struggles between the presidency and some groups, Vox in particular, to remove terms considered offensive.
Those clashes had come during discussions of theoretically far less controversial issues.
And, on the other hand, when addressing a subject that arouses so many conflicting passions as sedition, there was not the slightest incident.
There was even a funny moment, such as when the Vox deputy Javier Ortega Smith provoked laughter from Rufián and his ERC colleagues by summoning them: “If you hate Spain so much, renounce your Spanish nationality, take a plane and go to North Korea , Cuba or Venezuela”.
Ortega Smith delivered an inflamed speech in defense of the essence of the Spanish nation that was replicated by Jaume Asens, from Unidas Podemos: "It reminded me a lot of the
Volksgeist
[spirit of the people] of Nazism.
It sounded a lot like fascism to me."
Nor did the spirits change.
Arrimadas drew a big applause from Vox when he criticized the presidency for having withdrawn the floor last Tuesday from his deputy Patricia Rueda, who stated that the Government "rewards philoterrorists", a statement that the leader of Ciudadanos signed by appealing to the pacts of the Executive with EH Bildu.
For the rest, the debate only served to delve into the already known arguments.
The formations of the Government defended that it is a question of adapting the Spanish legislation to the European one and its detractors replied that, although with different names, other countries contemplate similar crimes.
Some assured that their purpose is to promote coexistence in Catalonia and others that the Executive sided with the "coup plotters."
And in a separate dimension, the independentistas opposed to the reform.
Josep Pagès, from Junts, interpreted it as proof that the Government “is obsessed with bringing Puigdemont back.
And Mireia Vehì, from the CUP, deplored the fact that the new crime of public disorder could be applied to behaviors such as those of the independence activists who blocked the Barcelona airport in protest of the condemnation of the leaders of the
process,
in October 2019.
No clues about the possible change of embezzlement
It had already happened in last week's debate and it was repeated in yesterday's: neither the government formations nor their parliamentary allies made the slightest allusion to the possibility that the reform would also soften the penalties for embezzlement, another of the crimes that weigh on pro-independence leaders involved in organizing the illegal referendum on October 1, 2017. The opposition deputies alluded to this possibility to reinforce their cascade of arguments against the proposal, but on the other side they did not obtain any indication as to whether this idea go ahead.
The initiative to reform embezzlement was launched at the time by ERC, and the Prime Minister himself, Pedro Sánchez, was willing to study it.
But the proposal has run into obstacles.
Several formations that support the Government have expressed their rejection because it could imply benefits to people convicted of corruption.
Even ERC has admitted that danger and has not finished specifying how the issue could be addressed.
The matter should be clarified next week, when the deadline for submitting amendments closes, the way that ERC initially announced to put that proposal on the table.
The deputy of Esquerra Carolina Telechea limited herself to exposing yesterday that the legal reform already underway is still "improvable" during the rapid processing process that begins now.
"We will be demanding," announced the Republican deputy without offering any further clues.
ERC faced criticism in the debate from its until recently partner in the Government, Junts, whose deputy Josep Pagès criticized: "They accept everything that the Sánchez government puts on the table for them."
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