The PSOE, Junts, ERC and the other groups that support the amnesty law - Sumar, Podemos, PNV, Bildu, BNG - are willing to reactivate the rule and achieve its approval in Congress as soon as possible.
If possible next week already in committee, without the need to extend another 15 days, as the regulations allow.
In principle, the PSOE preferred to wait for the Galician elections to pass, but those plans seem to have changed due to the feeling, which is taking shape among all the protagonists, that the agreement is possible because everyone has the will to reach it and close the crisis that is emerging. It opened when Junts voted in plenary session against the law that it had negotiated and even approved in committee and thus forced it to be taken up again now, in a second and last opportunity before it declines.
The PSOE is maintaining contacts with Junts all these days, in the middle of the campaign, and yesterday a first meeting took place without progress in Barcelona, as
La Vanguardia
advances and this newspaper has confirmed, in which the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, was present. and the organization secretary of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, on behalf of the socialists;
and the general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, and his spokesperson in Congress, Miriam Nogueras, on behalf of Junts.
From this party they point out that in reality the negotiations have never been interrupted, although it was the socialists who wanted to maintain a certain
impasse
in the middle of the Galician election campaign, in which the Catalan independentists have nothing at stake.
These contacts have shown both groups, according to various negotiation sources, that there is room to reach an agreement.
In any case, in these contacts it has been clear that the positions are still far apart, because they are starting from a very different base.
But all the sources consulted from both sectors see an agreement as possible and almost inevitable, because no one wants or can let the law fall: the independentists, because they would be left without the amnesty that they have demanded so much for years and that their world now awaits;
and the Government, because it would lose the majority and be left without options to approve the Budgets.
Although that, as La Moncloa insists, would not mean that the legislature is at risk.
Pedro Sánchez is willing to continue even if he fails to approve the Accounts.
The PSOE, supported in this by all the other partners except Junts, is determined to maintain the law as it is or with some minimal tweaks.
Its limit remains where it was, and here everyone supports it, including ERC, the other major negotiator of the norm, which also fully affects its officials and people around them: Junts' idea of including all terrorism cannot be accepted. , without exceptions, within the amnesty, because that would imply that the law could be overturned in the Constitutional Court or in European justice.
The PSOE insists that it is not going to go there.
He already assumed three weeks ago that the vote would be lost for not accepting that point made by Junts, and he does not seem willing to give in on that.
But the socialists have proposed alternative solutions to their Junts partners, which the independentists continue to study although it seems evident that they are not entirely convinced.
The clearest is a very specific modification of the Criminal Procedure Law (LeCrim) to limit the deadlines for instructions such as the one in the
Tsunami case,
which affects Carles Puigdemont, leader of Junts, and Marta Rovira, general secretary of ERC, whom Judge García-Castellón wants to charge with terrorism.
More information
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This change, which would be surgical so that it does not affect other instructions that do require years, such as cases of drug trafficking or money laundering with many international rogatory commissions, would be designed to prevent judges such as the judge of the National Court Manuel García-Castellón from being able to stretch indefinitely an instruction that has been going on for four years without major progress - it has already achieved a six-month extension and if the law came into force immediately a second could be stopped - to prevent Puigdemont and Rovira from being able to benefit from the amnesty.
The socialists are convinced, as Félix Bolaños explained this Wednesday in RAC1 – the Minister of Justice said that the law “will not leave anyone out” – that the law as it stands will allow amnesty for all those involved in the process
,
Puigdemont included. , because he believes that the accusation of terrorism against the leader of Junts does not hold up and it would be impossible to maintain it in a trial, even outside of the investigation.
It is the same thing that happened with the
process,
which during the investigation phase was investigated as a crime of rebellion, the most serious, but when it came to trial it was classified as sedition because there was no way to sustain the rebellion.
Even top-level PP sources, at a lunch with 16 journalists last Friday, admitted that they find it very difficult to maintain this accusation of terrorism, despite what the popular ones say in public.
That is why the socialists are trying to convince Junts that it is better to leave the law as it is and work on other reforms, such as that of the LeCrim, to prevent the judges from dragging out an end that they see as inevitable, and that is that the accusations of terrorism against Puigdemont and Rovira decline and therefore enter the amnesty.
Even if these accusations were maintained for a while, the PSOE sees it as very difficult for a judge to deny amnesty for these politicians because, according to the latest agreed wording of the law, the magistrate would have to prove, for them to be excluded from the amnesty, that Both had a “direct intention” to “serious” attack the life of someone or torture them.
But Junts does not trust García-Castellón or other judges clearly opposed to the amnesty, and they want guarantees that it is applied immediately after its approval, which will now be delayed for at least a month.
And for that they continue to demand that the law be tweaked in the area of terrorism, exactly what the PSOE flatly rejects.
Junts does not see anything clear about the outcome of the LeCrim reform to shorten the deadlines, a solution that the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, also criticized from the Government, due to the risk of affecting very sensitive cases.
The socialists insist that the proposal on the table would in no case represent a backwater for these cases, but the formula has not yet been made known.
Junts sources fear, like Sumar, that retouching LeCrim could be detrimental to complex drug trafficking investigations, for example.
Sensations
In any case, the feelings conveyed by both sectors are positive, therefore the contacts, although initial, seem to have shown that there is room for an agreement.
Bolaños assured in Barcelona that he has “no doubt that there will be an amnesty law,” and that it will be robust enough to “leave aside the criminal, civil and accounting procedures that the people who were in the independence process have open. ”.
With these goals, and with the horizon of trying to resolve the problem immediately to go to the commission next week with the agreement closed, contacts will be intensified and negotiations will be reactivated even without waiting for the result of the Galician negotiations.
But in any case, if they do not bear fruit, the allies of the majority still have another card to play: an extension of another 15 days after the 21st. There, yes, it would be the last, and the decision would be final: either the law continues or decays
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