The political and legal objective of Junts, Carles Puigdemont’s party, is now for the former Catalan president to be able to attend in person, as he wishes, to the investiture session of the new president of Catalonia who emerges from the May 12 elections, a session that could take place in mid-July, according to its forecasts. But in Junts they do not have it all with them and they doubt the intentions and behavior of all the other parties, and in particular of their rivals from ERC and the PSOE. Sources from the Junts leadership and Puigdemont’s defense have even expressed their conclusion that the current Catalan president, Pere Aragonés, and the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, “have coordinated their agendas” to anticipate these elections and “prevent “the escaped leader of Justice can present himself as a candidate in those elections.” Puigdemont’s defense, who closed the agreement on the law with the PSOE, does not contemplate that any judge refuses to apply the benefits of the rule to anyone, although he says he has planned all the scenarios and resources.
The electoral panorama that has precipitated in Catalonia has caught Junts on the wrong foot and with its sights set, at least in Congress, on capitalizing on the success of the amnesty law and on the preambles of a tough negotiation to obtain results in the General State Budgets for 2024. This reality has once again fueled the recurring competition in the Cortes of Junts against ERC, but also the enormous distrust that Puigdemont’s party maintains in the PSOE Government, despite having achieved this Thursday the approval of that controversial amnesty law.
Weeks ago, the PSOE budget negotiators had informed Junts that the budget negotiation should be closed by March 12. That deadline was not met. Sources from the Junts parliamentary leadership admitted this Thursday in Congress that these negotiations were “very green” and concluded as “objective facts and seeing the pieces of the puzzle”, that both ERC, the PSC and the PSOE “have done well” advance the date of the Catalan regional elections almost a year “to make Puigdemont’s candidacy more difficult.” The nationalist formation assumes that ERC and Aragonès intend to “stop their electoral decline” with the “excuse” of rejecting the project for a large Hard Rock casino in Tarragona.
Neither the spokesperson for Junts in Congress, Míriam Nogueras, nor the president of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, who attended this Thursday as a guest in the chamber, wanted to relate, in subsequent statements, the amnesty law with the stability of the legislature and the central government of Pedro Sánchez, and both showed their joy and satisfaction for the amnestied colleagues. Nogueras wanted to emphasize that this rule “is not an end point” on the path outlined by his party towards its only priority: the independence of Catalonia. Junqueras was more diplomatic and pointed out that his party always is and will be in favor of stability and “expansive budgets that help families, workers and companies make ends meet.”
The Government denies that there was any prior agreement between Aragonés and Sánchez to agree on early elections. There have not even been conversations, they say, but they do not deny that this Catalan call could be politically convenient for them at this very complex and tense moment in the legislature, in the midst of the noise of the Koldo case. The president and socialist leader, Pedro Sánchez, will travel to Catalonia this weekend to participate in the PSC congress and to promote the candidacy of Salvador Illa. The socialists believe that the former minister will have “a magnificent result” at the polls, although later they do not dare to predict how the enigma of governability in that territory will be resolved. They are also convinced that the PP will do very poorly in those elections.
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Sources from the political and judicial leadership of Puigdemont’s team assure that the intention of the amnesty law is not only to benefit the former president (They estimate that it may ultimately affect between 300 or 400 people with criminal cases and more than 1,000 with economic sanctions). However, they do recognize that one of the fundamental goals is to ensure that Puigdemont can attend the investiture session of the new president in mid-June. In this sense, these political and legal sources have stated this Thursday in Madrid, in the midst of the amnesty debate, that Puigdemont will not be affected by the precautionary measures that any judge may require at the time, in particular Pablo Llarena, from the Criminal Chamber. of the Supreme Court.
“Orchestrated doubts and other legitimate ones”
“The judges are going to have doubts, it is undeniable, some orchestrated and others legitimate, to raise a preliminary question about the application of the amnesty, but that should not affect the lifting of any precautionary measures that may be requested. First, because this struggle between the judge’s duty to make the consultation and the personal right to freedom should be resolved in favor of the affected person because he is above it.” This is how these sources from Puigdemont’s legal team see the possibility that the Supreme Court judge could try to prevent in this way the measure of grace towards the top leader of Junts.
These sources say they “do not contemplate” that Llarena option, and even less so that the judge of the National Court Manuel García Castellón could demand it, who opened an investigation for alleged crime of terrorism against Puigdemont as the head or promoter of the violent actions of Democratic Tsunami. They also emphasize that the amnesty law cannot specify anything about how or who lifts precautionary measures on an affected person because that power corresponds to a judge or a court; But what the rule does specify is that they are obliged to apply it within two months from its entry into force, which is expected for mid-May. And there “there is no room for conscientious objection,” they specify.
In the political environment and their immediate defense of Puigdemont, they maintain that the leader could present himself as a candidate without any impediment, both in the Catalan and European elections. He would be the one to decide, at the time of taking possession of the act, in which parliament he would prefer to remain and that then the time would arise to resign from one of those acts. These same sources assure, with the doctrine and precedents established by the Central Electoral Board, that Puigdemont’s candidacy could not be made impossible because he had an expired National Identity Document (DNI), having already been outside Spain for more than six years. . In that sense, they clarified that it remains to be seen whether Puigdemont has an expired DNI. In any case, they point out that he did have it that way in 2019 and was able to present himself.
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