The Catalan independence movement has always, from the first day, proposed one principal objective in the amnesty law: that it should accommodate all those involved in different judicial cases from the beginning of the independence process onward, located chronologically in a diffuse period which for some begins in late 2011 and for others starts in the first months of the following year. Be that as it may, the amnesty is either an umbrella under which all those who have faced reprisals can stand or it is a patch, a band-aid. The Socialists (PSOE), for their part, have another view of the problem, since it was not something they wanted to do and it was only the electoral results of last July that led them to accept it. And every time a few decibels of political dispute are heard, they try to take a step backwards and ensure that the fewer people who can fit under that umbrella, the better.
We are seeing that at present, as a debate is taking place about whether those involved in the Tsunami protest platform case or the CDR activist groups should be covered by the amnesty or not, since in the middle there is an accusation of terrorism, conveniently readied by the Spanish justice system to prevent the new law from being universal. The Socialists take refuge in the argument that an amnesty cannot be accepted for those who face terrorism charges, so that the law does not run into problems in Brussels. But this argument is not only a lie, it is a trap. It situates the debate on terrain where it should not stand, because, obviously, neither Tsunami nor the CDRs are terrorism, no matter how much the National Audience court insists on it. The Spanish judiciary just wants to have a kind of box - and these two cases offer it - where they can place pro-independence people so that they cannot benefit from the amnesty, starting with Carles Puigdemont and Marta Rovira.
We are not dealing with a minor issue, but a central one, in what for some is a sudden slam on the brakes by the PSOE and for others, a trap that they had prepared for very well
The end result, should this thesis succeed, would be that the pro-independence parties would have made a botch job: they would be validating an amnesty law that would cease to be rock-solid and instead resemble a Gruyère cheese. That is why there has been no agreement on the amendments that have been presented and that is why the PSOE has tried to build a wall to keep out the independentist requests. Minister Bolaños, in the role of bearer of bad news, has closed the door to the requests of Junts and ERC, making fallacious arguments and insisting that the PSOE is "highly convinced" that serious crimes must be exempted from the amnesty, as they are already in the draft bill. In other words, leaving free rein to judge Manuel García-Castellón.
We are not dealing with a minor issue, but a central one, in what for some is a sudden slam on the brakes by the PSOE and for others, a trap that they had prepared for very well. In addition, there is the fire that Felipe González has ignited by replying to the words of José María Aznar and calling on Spanish society to react against the amnesty, which he considers to be a merciless attack on the Constitution. We will end up seeing them together, time will tell, in some demonstration against the amnesty. Although González's weight in the party is relatively minor, his words always shake the foundations and, above all, serve as an excuse to let go of the brake. This is something that Madrid does very well: keep things going and generate fear when a proposal is not to their liking. In this they are true experts who sometimes have it easy if the other side is naive.
The PSOE is finding it hard to situate itself in its new parliamentary reality, from which it flees as if it did not exist. But the pro-independence parties sometimes get restless if they prolong a conflict and take a debate too far. And there we have it for both sides: negotiating the amendments because many things were left open or as implications.