Although initiatives presented from the political opposition are always something of an inventory, the political see-sawing of the People's Party (PP) is still striking, moving between keeping its supporters mobilized - in this regard, there is the proposal to modify the Penal Code to include a series of crimes relating to hypothetical consultations such as that of the November 9th, 2014 and referendums such as that of October 1st, 2017, which would prompt the illegalization of all organizations involved - and maintaining a communications hot line with Together for Catalonia (Junts) which the direction of the PP opened via Esteban González Pons, in the second week of last August.
The PP gets uneasy every time that encounter is talked about and even denies it. Perhaps to protect González Pons, deputy secretary for the PP's institutional action, vice president of the European People's Party and a figure of confidence for Feijóo, the PP has always avoided the subject. But this meeting in which González Pons met Catalan president Puigdemont in Brussels is where it was clarified that there could be no agreement, since the PP could not take on the political agenda of the exiled leader's party, but that the communication gateway would not be broken. Days later, Pons declared that Junts was a party of tradition and legality that no one had any quarrel with and Feijóo paid up, as a demonstration of his good disposition to keep open a means of communication, by allowing the formation of a Junts parliamentary group in the Senate.
The first decree law of the legislature which minister Bolaños wanted to slip through, which ended up hiding an explosive device aimed at sinking the amnesty, looks like it will be left high and dry
It was not the only contact between PP and Junts, always on the initiative of the former, but this one with the Valencian politician is the only one that has a certain significance, because if things had gone differently, who knows how the story of the following weeks might have been written and if, perhaps, the Spanish government could now be another. The PP, firing its torpedos at the waterline of the Catalan pro-independence parties, is not the same body that sought a cleansing of its sins in order to try and reach the government benches, but rather, it seeks to short-circuit Vox so that it does not gain ground as well as to build a containing wall to control the movements of the President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
To come out, at the moment, with a proposal to dissolve parties or organizations that promote an independence referendum is, as it is proposed, a deliberate gesture to the gallery, since the possibilities of such a move happening are, at the moment, less than zero. This package of hypothetical future illegalizations over a hypothetical referendum or consultation would also include, apart from the political parties, the Òmnium and ANC pro-independence organizations. And all this is occurring slap-in-the-middle of parliamentary debate in Congress on the amnesty bill, which has enough votes to be approved.
By the way, the first decree law of the legislature which the minister of presidency and justice, Felix Bolaños, wanted to slip through - as if he had no interest in its content - and which ended up concealing an explosive device aimed at sinking the amnesty, by proposing the paralysis of the bill if anyone sought to raise preliminary questions to the European Court of Justice, looks like it will be left high and dry, since the numbers do not add up for the PSOE. Junts will not vote and the PNV and Bildu give disapproving looks. Moving forward its measures is likely to require a full legislative bill, with the required provision for amendments and all the relevant parliamentary procedure. Far from the shadowy path which was intended.