Spain Notes, Sept 5: Puigdemont in charge
0/ Choose your subscription here. Subscriber-only commentary articles coming shortly as I get back into the flow of the stories after the summer. Not sure if the notes will be in the mornings and commentary in the evenings or the other way around, but we’ll just roll with it for now.
1/ Puigdemont told the world what he wants after six years as a fugitive in Brussels: a get-out-of-jail free card for everyone involved in the events of October 2017 and a referendum on the independence of Catalonia. Either Spain repeats its general election or they do a deal with him, he said, adding that the deal should be “historic […] a commitment that no Spanish government or regime has been able to turn into reality since the fall of Barcelona in September…1714”.
2/ The Objective reported last night that the PSOE has indeed made an offer of an amnesty for more than 4,000 people involved in the October 2017 rebellion.
3/ Yolanda Diaz said yesterday afternoon that “dialogue is a method and a compromise”. The Deputy PM said she was working “towards a plurinational country where politics is all about solutions”, and published some Borgen-like photos of the meeting on her Twitter account:
4/ Spanish prosecutors are fuming: there are articles of Spain’s Criminal Code that in theory prohibit public servants from not pursuing crimes they are aware of, and the Deputy PM cannot not be aware of the Supreme Court wanting Puigdemont back from Brussels for the past six years.
5/ Popular Party leader Feijóo said the government “has held a meeting with a fugitive from justice in Belgium. They have gone there to negotiate an amnesty that is contrary to the Constitution, and independence referendums”. Either, he said in a radio interview this morning, Sánchez authorised the trip or he has to sack her.
6/ Vox, which took part in the 2019 trial of the separatists, said Puigdemont “should be in jail” and that Yolanda Díaz should be hauled before a judge on her return to Spain “to tell him why she met with a criminal fugitive”.
7/ Former socialist PM Felipe González weighed in during another radio interview: “In what role has Mrs. Diaz been to visit Mr. Puigdemont?”, he wondered: “she didn’t go as Deputy Prime Minister? Then she should stop being the Deputy PM for a bit”.
8/ The big newspapers weigh in this morning on the issue too: El País sees it as Sumar trying steal the spotlight from a more innocent PSOE in the negotiation drama for the new left-wing-separatist government. ABC reckons that “Puigdemont has already won” and that Diaz is doing Sánchez’s bidding with the conservative Catalan separatist in the same way Pablo Iglesias once did it with left-wing Catalan separatists. The Deputy PM, says the paper, “refused to meet (PP leader) Feijóo but has shown reverence towards Puigdemont”. Sánchez knows what is going on and has confused “audacity with complete surrender”.
9/ Police are still searching for the father of the boy that went missing during the flooding in Aldea del Fresno (Madrid) late on Sunday night. The boy was found hanging to a tree and his mum and sister were also rescued safely. Different media outlets are reporting between 3-5 deaths from the rain. Madrid firefighters have uploaded some drone footage of the damage.
10/ More details are coming to light about the other big scandal in Spanish football this year: the Negreira refereeing investigation. €7.3 million went missing somewhere from 1994-2018, between Barça and the godfather of Spanish refereeing. A Civil Guard report says refereeing decisions in Spain during those years “were not always impartial in sporting terms”. Barça is denying it all and there is confusion, as always, as to where the money went, exactly.