The right-wing Partido Popular issued harsh accusations against Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Monday, suggesting some official sectors are trying to influence the judiciary for the future amnesty law to allow former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont and other separatist leaders to return to Spain as free individuals.
The PP’s angry reaction comes after Supreme Court prosecutor Álvaro Redondo refused to open an investigation against Puigdemont for alleged terrorist offences, which would facilitate his return to Spain without fear of being arrested.
The sensitive dossier is related to the actions committed by the Tsunami Democràtic movement in 2019 in rejection of the sentence of the Spanish justice against prominent members of the Catalan separatist forces for the events of 2017 when the radical separatist forces declared – unilaterally – the independence of Catalonia.
According to El Confidencial, prosecutor Redondo considers that there is insufficient evidence against the former Catalan president for alleged crimes of terrorism or for violent acts that could qualify as “terrorist acts”.
However, the prosecutor’s negative report to investigate Puigdemont is not final and will still be reviewed by other prosecutors, likely this week.
The tricky definition of “terrorism.”
The definition of “terrorist actions” allegedly carried out by the separatist movement is one of the bones of contention between Sánchez’s Socialist Party and the right-wing separatist group Together For Catalonia (JxCat), led by Puigdemont, on whose seven seats in the Madrid parliament the stability of the government relies.
Sánchez’s government also depends on supporting the other main Catalan separatist forces, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), and the pro-independence Basque parties PNV and EHB Bildu.
Last week, the JxCat refused to approve the latest draft of the future grace period law because it said it was not 100% certain that the Spanish courts and the EU Court of Justice could not overturn the text based on legal defects of form.
This is precisely the aim of the PP and the far-right Vox party, the third largest force in the Spanish parliament, who consider the norm unconstitutional and have described it as a “coup d’état” by Sánchez.
Puigdemont’s party has threatened – against the criteria of the ERC – to withdraw its parliamentary support for Sánchez and bring down the government unless all its demands to “shield” the text are met and no separatist leader is left outside its “umbrella” of legal protection.
The PP’s serious accusations
The political tension between the PSOE and the PP reached a peak on Monday after PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo accused the socialist party and its allies of trying to directly influence the judges.
“Since when can the president of the government supplant judges and issue sentences as if he were the president of the Supreme Court?” asked Feijóo, former president of the regional government of Galicia (Xunta).
Last week, Justice Minister Félix Bolaños (PSOE/S&D) clarified that the future amnesty law is fully in line with the Spanish Constitution (of 1978) and does not include the crime of terrorism in its broadest definition.
(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)
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