The proposed amnesty law whose text was presented this Monday in Spain's Congress of Deputies by the Socialist parliamentary group, a bill which has the backing of all the parties that will make possible the investiture of Pedro Sánchez on Thursday, is, without a shadow of a doubt, a political victory for the independence movement. You only need to go back a few months to see how the impossible has become possible: all of the events included between January 1st, 2012 and November 13th, 2023 - the day that the bill entered the lower house's register - that occurred in the context of the 9-N independence poll in 2014 and the 1-O referendum in 2017. This includes everyone from the presidency of the Generalitat at the time, occupied by Carles Puigdemont, to the rest of the leaders of the independence process who were prosecuted for acts linked to its organization and execution. Likewise, all those who participated in the preparatory actions, the protest actions to defend them or to oppose the prosecution and conviction of those responsible are also included, as well as the assistance, collaboration, advice or representation of any type, protection and security to those responsible.
This, one of the cornerstones of the Spanish legislature that has just started, proceeds to turn around the judicial situation that began with the independence process and leaves behind, at least legislatively speaking, all of the means of evasion put to use by the different Spanish judicial bodies. The following paragraph is of particular irritation for the various Spanish right-wing groups: "The warrants for the search, arrest and imprisonment of the people to whom this amnesty applies, as well as the national, European and international arrest warrants, will be void." A paragraph that is matched by another, equally exhaustive in its efforts to avoid legal obstructions: "In any case, the aforementioned interim injunctions that have been adopted will be lifted even when an appeal of unconstitutionality against this law or any of its provisions is presented." A way, in theory, of tying the hands of the Supreme Court and restricting its room for manoeuvre. Given that, in this life, you must commit any sin before that of naivety, the legislation will soon begin an approval process full of abrasive views, and will thus come up against all kinds of legislative, political and judicial obstacles. Not to mention the abandon with which street protest is being recklessly used to intimidate and try to alter democratic majorities.
I am very afraid that we are a long way from the moment when the real application of the law begins, since the legislative process in Congress will not be carried out under urgency, and thus that amendments can be presented; that of the Senate will be even more complicated, because the PP has a majority in the upper house and has announced very loudly that it is going to obstruct its processing as much as possible by requesting reports, even from the General Council of the Judiciary. Once this second legislative obstacle has been overcome, the law will return to Congress for final approval. It will be then that the judges' turn will open and although the text emphasizes that the amnesty will have to be applied on a "preferential and urgent" basis and that "decisions will be adopted within a maximum period of two months, notwithstanding subsequent appeals, which will not have suspensive effects". We will have to wait and see how all this plays out. A period between six months and a year does not seem exaggerated, given the degree of political inflammation that has occurred.
A good example of the climate of civil war that the right is trying to impose on the current situation is that scarcely a few hours go by without some declaration against Pedro Sánchez's accords with the pro-independence parties. This Monday, it has been the turn of the CEOE business association and the Supreme Court, with the latter labelling the amnesty as barbaric, and assuring that it intends to put an end to justice, something that is quite a paradox when one reads the sentences of that court's third chamber against the leaders of the independence process. Because, perhaps, the action that breached justice was that sentence and not the future amnesty. The fact that the loser with the amnesty law is the entire Article 155 block, including the born-again Socialists who have had to make a virtue of necessity, should not prevent us from reiterating that the law has some gaps: the area of lawfare, most evident, where the battle was joined late, badly and without conviction.