While waiting, at the time of writing, for the new draft of the amnesty bill, to be announced in the next few hours and submitted for approval this Wednesday morning to the Spanish Congress's justice committee, the most certain aspect is that the legislation will change. All the statements by the Socialists (PSOE) and prime minister Pedro Sánchez about the impossibility of modifying the law, the mandatory compliance with Europe, that the last proposal is the last proposal, and similar phrases have come face to face with reality: without a law accepted by the pro-independence parties, there is no Spanish legislature, and Together for Catalonia (Junts) was already prepared to throw out the old draft bill if the perimeter was not widened.
There were two areas where it called for change and both are to be modified: terrorism and high treason. The offence of misuse of funds will also be modified, in this case taking on board the opinion of the Venice Commission on the amnesty bill, an opinion whose draft was leaked last week by the Spanish government as a life preserver, tossed into the labyrinth where presidency and justice minister, Félix Bolaños, can taken the negotiation. Indeed, the minister who promoted the red lines shutting out the text proposed by Junts has been lowering the barriers little by little. Here we have one of the explanations for why a negotiation of weeks has lasted months. The definition of terrorism, around which much of the debate has revolved, includes only those crimes that are related to it under international law and not placed within its scope by the restrictive Spanish Penal Code. In the case of high treason, something similar happens and the imaginative situations conceived by Spanish justice that we have seen from judges Manuel García-Castellón and Joaquín Aguirre are, on paper, removed.
Three more reflections. The PSOE's strategy has been eroded by the successive media impacts of the last few weeks. After the painful defeat in the Galicia elections arrived the scandal of the Koldo case, which became the Ábalos case, from there the Armengol case and, finally, the Sánchez case. Today the Spanish prime minister is in the middle of two corruption cases which will have a long way to run: the case of the face masks and the rescue of Air Europa. In both, the nexus is Sánchez and his strength is already being drained. The legislature has begun to falter and, at present, neither the amnesty nor the budget offer assured salvation in the medium term. The People's Party (PP) knows this, it will not relax its vice-grip, and the Socialists are starting to see that, as they try without success to bail out a boat which has sprung too many leaks.
Without a law accepted by the pro-independence parties, there is no Spanish legislature, and Junts was prepared to throw out the old draft if the perimeter was not widened
Secondly, with the amnesty passed, a new legislature begins. It is not the end point for Sánchez, but the beginning of phase two. What is he prepared to give up to continue in government? The budget negotiation will give the first clues, but first deputy PM Montero does not have - not by a long shot - the public accounts in the bag. Now her real Everest begins. Thirdly, a good amnesty law does not guarantee a speedy resolution of all the cases that are pending or already tried, nor does it give a total guarantee. To think that Spanish justice will make it easy for this government is a utopia. In any case, time will tell. But the law will be there for the present and the future. Its approval could only have been possible under the PSOE, everything else depends on current or future political circumstances.
It will also be interesting to see the moves made by Spanish justice from this point on. Because if one thing is clear, it is that the clash of powers between the legislature and the executive, on the one hand, and the judiciary, on the other, will make many headlines in the times ahead. The war is no longer in the trenches, but rather, out on open ground.