The Spanish parliament started its debate on the controversial amnesty law on Tuesday, a discussion which should prove to be one of the most acrimonious moments in the country’s recent parliamentary history.
The bill is aimed at canceling the “criminal, administrative and accounting responsibility” of all those who committed crimes related to the demand for the secession of Catalonia from Spain over more than a decade, from January 1, 2012, to November 13, 2023. The crimes include not only organizing the illegal referendum in Catalonia in 2017 but also those stemming from riots and street violence that took place in relation to the referendum—though only if the accused acted in favor of Catalonia’s secession.
Weeks of protests in front of the headquarters of the ruling socialist party PSOE against the bill have preceded the text hitting the floor of Congress for the first open debate among deputies.
The first step scheduled for Tuesday was a debate and vote on whether the lower chamber would take the bill under consideration and allow it to continue through the legislative process. As expected, it was approved with 178 of the 350 deputies voting in favor. The center-right Partido Popular managed to force the Congress to vote by individual roll call, making each deputy face the responsibility for his vote. Now the bill is open for amendments.
The bill was also at the center of the sessions of parliament’s questions to the government ministers the government Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, though Sánchez was not present as he was more than 1,600 kilometers away, in Strasbourg, appearing before the Plenary of the European Parliament to take stock of the current Spanish presidency of the European Council.
Additionally, the same majority of left-leaning and separatist parties also voted in favor of forming three investigative congressional committees, one on an old corruption case in the PP, one on the use of spyware against separatists starting in the last PP government that ended in 2018, and one on two jihadist attacks in Catalonia in 2018, thought the outcomes were also part of the discussions between the socialist and separatists to favor each of their causes.
The investiture agreement between the PSOE and the Catalan separatist party Junts specified that
The conclusions of the investigative commissions that will be established in the next legislature will be taken into account in the application of the amnesty law to the extent that situations may arise that fall within the concept of lawfare or judicialization of politics, with the consequences that, where appropriate, may give rise to liability actions or legislative modifications
In other words, the congressional investigations are designed to show that separatists are persecuted politically through the judicial system and justify the direct intervention by the executive and legislative branches of the government in the judicial rulings against separatists. This takes the stakes of amnesty beyond a mere pardon of punishment for acknowledged offenses to a direct political intervention in the justice process.
Spain is in one of the tensest moments in its recent history with nothing less than democracy up for debate in parliament as the terms of amnesty involve a violation of the separation of the branches of government and the independence of the judiciary, all to favor politically certain specific groups because they have promised to keep Sánchez in the country’s premiership.
