Not even a month has gone by since the confirmation of the judgement by Seville's Provincial Audience court sentencing José Antonio Griñán to six years and two days in prison with a complete ban on his holding public office for a period of 15 years, for aggravated misuse of public funds, and Manolo Chaves to a nine-year ban on holding public office, both for the ERE case, the largest system of institutionalized economic corruption in the history of Spain. And already, the machinery to grant a pardon has been set in motion, endorsed by two former Spanish prime ministers, Felipe González and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
It seems to matter very little or not at all that around 700 million euros were misappropriated through a system of fraud in the granting of social and labour benefits. What this is all about is making sure that Griñán and Chaves, who were presidents of the autonomous community of Andalusia and, above all, presidents belonging to the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), do not set foot in prison. Chaves, who did not receive a prison sentence, is already assured of avoiding a custodial punishment, and now all the machinery has been set in motion to free Griñán from his sentence and one could almost bet that it will succeed and he will not end up being shown into a cell.
It sounds like some kind of joke that decent people like the nine pro-independence leaders convicted by the Supreme Court spent almost four years in prison for a political action, which, as has already been seen in other European courts, did not deserve them being deprived of their liberty, while at the same time the covering up of a multi-million euro fraud is protected by the Spanish government, to the point of compromising the true meaning of what a pardon is. It is worth recalling that the pardoned members of the 2017 Catalan government, the civil society leaders and the speaker of parliament were granted a pardon that was partial and reviewable, and that even now the Supreme Court is considering once again whether appeals against the pardons should be considered. Meanwhile, Griñán gets off scot-free for the simple fact that the PSOE cannot afford to have its former party president go to prison.
We will hear a lot in the coming months about the Griñán pardon and whether or not he or Chaves pocketed any money themselves. The debate, when couched in this way, remains a fallacy. And a red herring. The conviction makes clear the misappropriation of a stratospheric amount which, moreover, was used for the purpose of maintaining a clientelistic regime that had a return in votes to ensure the PSOE's political hegemony in Andalusia.
We are not, therefore, talking about something trivial. A state rooted in those same fundamentals is also acting in this way: protecting its people no matter what they have done. The overriding good of an idea of Spain that grants favours to a few, whatever their crime may have been. And we will see the People's Party looking the other way, just as we have seen the PSOE looking the other way when the cases of some PP leaders were discussed. No-one will be shocked, and the convicted Griñán will be quickly pardoned. Things will take their course.