Spain Notes, Sept 24: PP marches against the amnesty deal with Puigdemont
1/ The PP held its rally in Madrid against Sánchez’s amnesty deal with Puigdemont, framed it as a march for “equality” and claimed 65,000 attendees from all over Spain.
2/ Vox didn’t go in the end.
3/ “All Spaniards are going to pay for the coup you attempted and all Spaniards are going to pay for the next one you will attempt next time”, said Aznar (PP, former PM), in a message to the separatists.
4/ “We are here to declare that in Spain, the law must be followed, to proclaim that opportunistic minorities do not have the right to impose the privileges they mean to and to say that we don’t want our rule of law used as a bargaining chip to win a confidence vote to become Prime Minister”, said Rajoy (PP, former PM, PM when Puigdemont declared independence in 2017)
5/ “There are parties that consider their former prime ministers to be dinosaurs or spokespeople for the ancien régime, but for us Aznar and Rajoy are current memory of the best Spain”, said Feíjóo (PP, current leader).
6/ The comments expressed at the PP rally this morning were very much in line with the thoughts expressed by senior old socialists Felipe González and Alfonso Guerra this month: neither the amnesty nor any referendum on the secession of Catalonia are constitutional.
7/ Feijóo would like to become PM this week, but it’s very unlikely to happen at this late stage. The debate starts in parliament on Tuesday at 12 p.m.
8/ The right still doesn’t have the votes either to appoint Feijóo or to stop the left and the regional parties from then attempting to ram major constitutional reform through parliament as an ordinary urgent bill before Sánchez is even appointed PM.
9/ To give you an idea of the enormity of the sophistry that we are all about to witness this autumn, it the amnesty or the referendum were to be attempted legally (Article 168, just like in 2017, it hasn’t changed), such major constitutional reform would require a supermajority vote in both houses of parliament, the dissolution of parliament and a general election, new supermajority votes in both newly elected houses and then a national referendum on the matter.
10/ At a Socialist Party rally in Gavà (Catalonia), Sánchez said the PP always seemed to worry about being “very Spanish, the most Spanish, the only Spaniards”, while not really caring very much for Spaniards: “they voted against raising the minimum wage, they voted against updating pensions, they voted against the labour reform that we negotiated with both the unions and the bosses”.
11/ El País wrote against the “irresponsible spectacle” the PP had organised with its rally in Madrid today, and that Feijóo should behave more properly by expressing his arguments in parliament during the confidence vote: “responsibility is about reducing tension, not gesticulating about a democractic apocalypse”.
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