Puigdemont imposes the amnesty and the end of the legal process to negotiate the investiture

He expresident of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont sets his lines to open negotiations for the investiture of the socialist leader, Pedro Sánchez as President of the Government. In an act in Brussels, the Catalan has established his conditions to sit at the negotiating table that go through the abandonment of the judicial route, amnesty for those accused by the ‘proces’, the recognition of the democratic legitimacy of the independence movement and a mechanism supervision of commitments.

It was in a speech before a little less than a hundred people that Puigdemont established his conditions for those seven deputies from Junts x Catalunya, key in the investiture process of Pedro Sánchez, to support the socialist leader. But before sitting down to negotiate, he demands amnesty in Congress, that the figure of a kind of meter be established to monitor that the commitments have been fulfilled, that the negotiations be behind closed doors and the promise of a referendum on the table, they explain. sources from the environment of political formation.

In the list raised by Puigdemont, who fled from the Spanish justice to Belgium in 2017 after the referendum on October 1 and the unilateral declaration of independence, it appears that the State Prosecutor’s Office and the State Attorney abandon the judicial process against the criminal causes of the process. He considers that “October 1 has not been a crime, nor has the declaration of independence and the massive protests against the repression,” he pointed out.

Among the demands of the independentistas are an “amnesty law” for those accused of the process to include the broad spectrum of the repression that began before the consultation on November 9, 2014″. In this way, the responsibility of “reparing an injustice” has been placed on the shoulders of the acting Government.

And to supervise the commitments acquired, the former president of the Generalitat has demanded the creation of a mechanism of “mediation and verification that provides guarantees of compliance and monitoring of the agreements of the two major Spanish political parties.” That is to say, a kind of mediating figure or supervisor of compliance with the agreements reached since, he has justified, the “lack of trust between the parties” makes it essential to create this mechanism from the beginning of the negotiations.

Finally, in the list of commitments, he has inscribed the “recognition and respect for the democratic legitimacy of the independence movement.” He has referred to the intelligence objectives of the police forces and has accused the “Spanish State” of spying, infiltrating and fabricating assemblies to carry out baseless arrests “to” paralyze “the citizen mobilization for independence.

If these are the bases for the former president of the Generalitat to sit at the negotiating table, Puigdemont has wanted to go a step further and has conditioned support for the investiture on a promise of a self-determination referendum in Catalonia. A condition for which there would be more room for negotiation, until November.

Specifically, the independence leader has called for a “referendum agreed with the Spanish State” as the only possible substitute for the “political mandate of October 1.” He has insisted that there are no “constitutional impediments” to organizing this referendum but rather “a lack of political will.”

“We have not held the position all these years to end up saving a legislature but to defend the order received from the citizens”, he stressed at the end of a speech in which he emphasized that in twenty days the countdown will begin for the appointment of the president of the government. A process in which Spain will have to decide if it “lives in the blockade” or if it “agrees”.

It would be a “historic agreement” in the words of the independence leader, who has questioned whether the “two major Spanish parties are prepared to negotiate” or “they simply want to muddle through and obtain, whatever, parliamentary support.”