Spain Notes, Sept 18: amnesty, systemic risk...war?
0/ Spain is at systemic, historic risk of political disintegration, former Prime Ministers from both sides, are warning.
1/ Puigdemont said Sánchez should be less demanding, given he is the one who wants Catalan separatist votes to become PM again: “the person asking for help does not set the terms, this works the other way round”.
2/ He was replying to comments made by Deputy PM Yolanda Díaz (Sumar) in an interview with La Vanguardia over the weekend, in which she said that if someone is negotiating, they are not on the path of unilateral action.
3/ A Sumar spokesman tried to walk back her comments in statements to journalists on Monday morning: she was just expressing a political idea, not making actual demands on Puigdemont and Junts (to give up on unilateral action, i.e. declaring independence again).
4/ Socialist MEPs are reportedly gobsmacked at what is going on with Puigdemont: why did they bother arguing his European parliamentary immunity should be removed and that Spain is a democracy ruled by law? “This looks terrible”.
5/ El Mundo thinks the Socialist Party kicking Redondo out proves Sánchez is closer to the separatists than to real socialist values: “Is the PSOE going to expel everyone who points out the obvious in public: that an amnesty would be a blow with grave consequences for our constitutional system?”. [“Blow” = “golpe”, the word used in the editorial, which could also be “coup”…]
6/ ABC has spoken to very senior judges about the matter and says they have only found one who thinks it might work, but most say it’s not acceptable “either from a legal point of view, or a political perspective, or a moral dimension […the amnesty] would turn the state into the guilty party and the coup leaders into the innocent victims of an abusive, unjust democracy”.
7/ Esquerra is pressuring Sánchez to ram the amnesty through parliament before Sánchez is reappointed PM. Trias (Junts), who narrowly missed becoming Mayor of Barcelona in May, has said the Socialist Party was really behind the 1981 Tejero coup attempt.
8/ Ayuso (PP, Madrid) wants to go straight to a new general election and says Sánchez should be honest with voters about his plans with the separatists.
9/ ElDiario has a poll out, just in case that actually happens, which shows all the parties are just where they were in July, all of two months ago. The PP might have grabbed a percentage point off Vox.
10/ The Objective has found a lecturer in constitutional law who goes as far as to say that “the amnesty means recognising that there is open war with Catalonia”…because amnesties are generally used to end armed conflicts.