In the People's Party (PP) they are explaining that the amnesty for the Catalan independentists is going to take a very long time. That they have created a legal-political cobweb that will snarl up the issue for much longer than was thought, regarding both the return of the exiles and the end of the judicial cases involving hundreds of people in numerous legal processes. In fact, today no one believes the most optimistic initial calculations of having the amnesty law passed in February. To date, the only certainty is that it entered the Congress of Deputies on November 13th and that it is expected that in the December 12th plenary session of the lower house it will obtain the essential green light for its processing.
We will have to forget February and place ourselves in an unpredictable period of limbo, since its passage through the Senate will be a true Vietnam, with the PP making use of its absolute majority in the chamber, requesting countless reports and filibustering so that the usual established intervals for these things will be almost meaningless. If they get their way and there are no decisions from the Constitutional Court that force them to accelerate their deliberations, the calculations they make are very alarming, since their goal is for the law not to enter into force for the whole of 2024.
With the amnesty being processed in one chamber or another, or in the hands of the judges, the pro-independence parties will have to shift to a slightly lower gear
To achieve this, they are also depending on the Supreme Court and other judicial bodies to do the work of slowing things down, either by requesting clarifications or by their own application to the task. Although the amnesty law proposal is very clear regarding deadlines and its Article 10, which speaks of preferential and urgent processing, makes it explicit that the decisions of judicial, administrative and accounting bodies will be adopted within a maximum period of two months (notwithstanding any subsequent appeals, which will not have suspensive effects), the PP nevertheless consider that before it gets to this point there is still a lot of cloth to be cut and that they are not going to give up any battle as lost.
If this scenario ends up playing out there will be several collateral consequences. Firstly, how will the Catalan independence movement accept a stand-by situation, especially when they considered, not so many weeks ago, that the calendar would be much shorter. With the amnesty being processed in one chamber or another, or in the hands of the judges, the pro-independence parties will have to shift to a slightly lower gear, since I doubt that they would consider tossing the legislature into the rubbish and facilitating the arrival of the PP and Vox without the amnesty having been passed.
There is also the issue of the next Catalan election. In this regard, all the assumptions have been made based on the possibility that the exiles and political prisoners released with the Sánchez government's pardons in June 2021 could stand for office, if they wanted, since they would have been able to benefit from the amnesty. This is no longer so clear, since the Catalan election has to be held before February 2025, which will be four years since the last one. If things are stretched out a little more - and in the judicial world, nothing is surprising - the deadline would end up expiring. Not to mention the fake Tsunami Democràtic terrorism case started by judge García-Castellón, in which, following José María Aznar's call for everyone to do what they can, the newspaper El Mundo published this Sunday that the daughter of the tourist who died at El Prat attributes her father's death to the Tsunami protests.