It is in the midst of an unprecedented political and institutional crisis that the Spanish Senate will approve this Thursday the controversial reform of criminal laws that, among other changes, transforms the crime of sedition into public disorder. This change is seen as an attempt to pacify relations between the Catalan nationalist movements and the Spanish state.
The reform of the penal code is part of an agreement between the Government and the Republican Left of Catalonia, and has aroused much controversy and internal criticism within the PSOE.
The reform includes repealing the crime of sedition and replacing it with another of aggravated public disorder, which reduces the sentences from 10 to 15 years in prison to between three and five years.
The Government argues that sedition is a crime that most European penal codes no longer contemplate and that it is about modernizing the law in light of current parameters.
More controversial is the reform of the malpractice law, which modifies the penalty for embezzlement of public funds when they are not intended for the enrichment of public officials. In this case, the penalties are reduced to four years in prison and six years of disqualification.
Pedro Sánchez defends that the reforms are one more necessary step to restore coexistence with Catalonia, after the independence process. The opposition accuses the government of favoring corruption.
The reform also introduces the crime of illicit enrichment. Politicians who increase their assets by more than 250,000 euros during their term, and up to 5 years later, must justify where that amount comes from.
The approval of the law comes at a delicate moment in Spanish politics, after the decision of the Constitutional Court to paralyze the reform of its own personnel, something that the Government intended to introduce through a modification of the same text that will be approved this Thursday.
The Court thus responded to an appeal by the Popular Party, preventing the debate on the law in the Congress of Deputies and causing an unprecedented institutional crisis.
On Wednesday, Sánchez and Feijóo met in the Senate. “Despite trying to keep Parliament from speaking, I already guarantee that Parliament will speak. And it will make it loud and clear. The Constitution establishes a nine-year term for the magistrates of the Constitutional Court. Party, they have an eternal mandate”, said Sánchez.
And Feijóo replied: “Since Parliament is going to speak, let it speak with the truth and let the Parliament of all of Spain speak, which is all Spaniards. Call elections and we tell the truth.”
The sentence of the court, unprecedented in Spain because it is a preventive sentence and not laterput on the table the urgency of renewing the judicial bodies, blocked four years ago by decision of the Popular Party.
The law requires that the Constitution be renewed every nine years and that the General Council of the Judiciary be renewed every four. Both with a conservative majority, the PP refuses to reach an agreement with the Government, which needs a three-fifths majority to renew the legal bodies.
Source: TSF
