Former Catalan regional government president Carles Puigdemont on Tuesday asked for an amnesty for independence supporters convicted or charged with Catalonia’s 2017 attempt at self-determination to make Spain’s new government viable.
Puigdemont, who has been living in Belgium since 2017 to escape Spanish justice, said at a conference in Brussels on Tuesday that this is the condition for the party he belongs to, Together for Catalonia (JxCat), to start negotiations with the political formations who want that. to lead Spain’s new government following the July 23 elections.
Neither of the two largest Spanish parties, the Parido Popular (PP) and the Socialist Party (PSOE), won an absolute majority in the elections and in both cases they need the vote of JxCat deputies to return to a national government, as he underlined. next Tuesday: Carles Puigdemont himself.
The former Catalan president, who is considered the de facto leader of JxCat, who has other names in the leadership positions, reiterated on Tuesday that Catalonia’s 2017 attempt at self-determination “was not a crime” and called for “the abolition of all lawsuits against the independents”.
‘We want the Spanish parliament to approve an amnesty law’said Puigdemont, who said this is a precondition for starting any negotiations.
In addition to this demand, the MEP also asked for a “verification and follow-up mechanism” of the agreements that may be reached.
Puigdemont defended that the amnesty he claims is compatible with the Spanish constitution and that it “depends solely on political will”.
The leader of JxCat vowed not yet to look for “personal solutions” and stated that he lives “in exile” to make it “a political point of view”.
Puigdemont believed that if the conditions are met, JxCat will negotiate the viability of Spain’s new government in a “historic agreement” for Catalonia’s future.
The PP was the party with the most votes in the July 23 elections, but has so far failed to gain the support of a parliamentary majority that would guarantee the viability of a government.
The PSOE, on the other hand, has assured that, despite being the second most voted party, it is able to form a government again, with the votes of deputies drawn from an ‘apparatus’ of left, far-left, regionalist, nationalist and independent forces, which already managed to rally on August 17 in the election of the presidency of the parliament.
In these parliamentary presidential elections, the PSOE already received the support of JxCat, having launched a process to recognize Catalan as the official language of the European Union, as demanded by independence supporters.
The Socialists have also committed themselves to allowing the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician in the works of the Parliament of Spain in addition to Castilian.
This Tuesday’s statements by Puigdemont come after PSOE leader Pedro Sánchez said on Monday that the next legislature will “definitely leave behind” the rift that began in Catalonia in 2017, guaranteeing that it will be possible and a will reach agreement to invest again as prime minister.
Sánchez insisted that “dialogue” is the way to resolve the open conflict in Catalonia, defending its dejudicialization, and promised consistency with what he did in the last legislature, in which he pardoned convicted independence supporters and the crime of sedition from the Criminal Code. which landed Catalans in prison or of which others, such as Puigdemont, were accused.
At the same time, Labor Minister and leader of the far-left Somar forces platform, Yolanda Díaz, met with Carles Puigdemont in Brussels on Monday, in what was the first public and known contact between a member of the Spanish government. and the former president of the regional administration of Catalonia since fleeing to Belgium.
The meeting lasted about three hours and at the end, Somar and JxCat released a statement saying they “shared the deep conviction that political problems must return to political channels to find solutions based on dialogue”.
The right-wing and far-right parties (PP and VOX respectively) considered Yolanda Díaz’s meeting with Carles Puigdemont “a scandal”, emphasizing that the leader of Somar is one of the vice-presidents of the current government and that the former Catalan president, he is “a fugitive from justice”.
Source: DN
