The Government has already begun to try to convert Pedro Sánchez's first major parliamentary defeat, from which this time nothing saved him at the last minute, into a boomerang that will turn against the person mainly responsible for that hard blow to the waterline. of the Executive: Carles Puigdemont, leader of Junts.
Yesterday, the Executive expressed, in public and in private, with very evident gestures from the president himself, enormous anger with his pro-independence partners, the only allies who backed down a law that was accepted by everyone, not only ERC, but also PNV, Bildu, BNG and of course Sumar, and a clear message: the Government, this time, held its own and maintained its red lines.
Félix Bolaños, main negotiator of the amnesty law, went so far as to say that Junts had “voted with the PP and Vox, who want to imprison them.”
“It is incomprehensible that Junts has voted against a law that they have agreed upon,” concluded the Minister of the Presidency, who still insisted that they will continue working to convince Junts so that the amnesty does not decline.
The feeling that was experienced in the halls of Congress among various deputies of the majority was that the judges, especially Manuel García Castellón, of the National Court, had for the moment won the game in what the Government and its partners see as an attempt for blowing up the law.
But also that the game is not over, there are still many twists and turns and the amnesty is far from dead.
For now, he returns to the Congressional Justice Commission, where it will be debated again among the parliamentary groups for 15 days in the middle of the campaign for the Galician elections on February 18.
More information
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The Government's strategy is clear, and for this it has the support of ERC and the commons: throw all the pressure on Junts to "reconsider" its decision and be more flexible in the second round of this game on the knife's edge: when the rule is discussed again in a few weeks in the Justice Commission.
But above all, the president's entourage is very clear that despite this important setback, which puts the relationship with Junts in check, the legislature that has just begun is not at risk.
Sánchez is completely determined to continue.
“The legislature is not at risk, what is at risk if anything is the amnesty,” conclude government sources, who in any case will try to find a way out and convince Junts to review its position.
Meanwhile, sources from Puigdemont's parliamentary group point out that it will have to be the Government that gives in on the next attempt, or the legislature will really be at risk.
“The legislature decides Sánchez, not Junts.
They don't know the president,” they respond in La Moncloa.
There they have lived these last hours as a real challenge to the leader of the PSOE, who has an obvious parliamentary weakness but has many strengths: he is in La Moncloa, he controls the agenda, he has already obtained his investiture and therefore he is president until he decides to dissolve the courts.
He has extended Budgets that he can extend for much longer - now the negotiation of the new ones will undoubtedly be delayed - and he has in his hands control of an amnesty that the independentists need and have already promised to all those involved.
That is the trick that the Government and ERC hope to play with to pressure Junts.
In fact, ERC deputy Pilar Valluguera was very clear: “This amnesty is not about Puigdemont, nor about Marta Rovira [general secretary of ERC], it is about 1,550 people who are pending processes.
The decision that favors people the most is to vote yes,” she told Junts.
That is, ERC will try to accuse Junts of overturning an amnesty that benefits many people just because they believe that it may not save their leader.
Now we will have to see, explained several veteran deputies, what reaction there is in Catalonia to this decision that leaves the judicial future of those involved in the
process
in the air .
In the last few hours, the negotiation became a battle between Sánchez and Puigdemont.
And the president decided to stand up this time and hold on with his red lines, that is, not including all types of terrorism in the amnesty, as Junts requested.
The socialist negotiators, who had a clear instruction from Sánchez not to give in any further after the last transactional amendment that was agreed between the PSOE, ERC and Junts, already knew from the night before that there was a serious risk that Puigdemont's group would support the opinion but not the law as a whole in order to force it to return to the Justice Commission and start the game again, as finally happened.
The clear signal came in a videoconference on Monday night, in which Puigdemont himself participated with Jordi Turull, organization secretary of Junts, while Santos Cerdán, organization secretary of the Socialists, was on behalf of the PSOE.
There it began to be clear that there was no room to negotiate: neither the PSOE was going to vote for Junts' amendment 29, which eliminates terrorism from the exceptions of the law, nor were the independentistas willing to support the rule if it did not include that modification.
Talks continued on Tuesday, but there was never actually any negotiation.
It was a very hard blow for a president who in five years had not lost a single important vote, sometimes due to complications such as the error of a PP deputy on the labor reform.
But Sánchez and his team of faithful decided to endure and assume the cost of defeat in exchange for maintaining their red lines, showing Junts that not everything is possible and above all, according to Government sources, guaranteeing that the law is fully constitutional and not suffers the fiasco of being struck down by the Constitutional Court or European justice.
Something much worse, in the Government's view, than the scenario that Junts fears, that is that judges like García Castellón make it difficult for the amnesty to be applied to Puigdemont.
Legal discussion
The final discussion was above all legal, but with a clear political undertone.
Both the PSOE and ERC, which took over the last wording of the law, insisted to Junts that it is impossible to always go after the judges by changing the rule because they will always be able to find some loophole through which to sneak in and meanwhile, the risk is that the rule becomes unconstitutional and the cure is worse than the disease.
We must trust, they explained to Junts, that what for the Executive are unjustifiable excesses in the instructions of some judges end up coming to nothing in higher instances, as has happened in other instructions from García Castellón, especially the cases against Podemos.
In the end, both socialists and republicans believe, it will be impossible to prosecute Puigdemont and Rovira for terrorism.
The argument they use is that it is something unsustainable and that some Spanish or European body will stop it, as they see it.
But that means admitting that the amnesty for Puigdemont could be delayed, and Junts refused to accept it.
They want it now and guaranteed, at any legal cost.
For this reason, the spokesperson in the Junts Congress, Miriam Nogueras, said on the platform that they have not agreed on “a selective and deferred amnesty.”
Now there are many unknowns, especially how to get out of this and prevent the legislature from becoming a parliamentary hell or a blockade, although Bolaños insisted: “we have three and a half years left.”
It also remains to be resolved what effect this has on the imminent Galician elections, the first political milestone, on February 18.
The socialists wanted to get out of the delicate agenda of the amnesty as soon as possible to talk about the economy, pensions, the employment record, tourism, which favors them more.
With this extension, the new discussion of possible amendments can get fully into the Galician campaign, where the PP has much more at stake than anyone else due to the possibility of losing the absolute majority.
The PSOE is already preparing to make the most of its decision to stand against Junts, while the PP insists on Puigdemont's "humiliation" of Sánchez, in the words of Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
The pragmatic leader of the PSOE and his team have already been working from the minute following the vote to try to get the most out of this plan, the clearest so far against Puigdemont.
But no matter how much he tries to turn it into a victory, Sánchez experienced his first major parliamentary defeat this Tuesday since he has been president.
And a leader who decided to bring forward the general elections on the same night that he suffered a tough defeat in the regional elections is not someone who is going to sit still after a blow like that.
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