Stalled. This is the word used most often by PSOE and ERC leaders when they are asked about the state of the negotiations to present a bill to the Spanish Parliament amending the sections of the Penal Code that deal with the offences of rebellion and sedition. For ERC, in this final phase of the Spanish legislature, it is a priority issue. For Pedro Sánchez it is simply an important legislative initiative in which he alleges, in view of the difficulties of a change of this nature, that there is not a sufficient majority in the Congress of Deputies.
If by "a sufficient majority" he means that it is impossible to achieve a parliamentary majority in this matter that goes beyond the majority that voted for him to form a government in 2020, that is true. Don't expect to find any of the Spanish right there, who will do nothing but criticize the move as a concession to the pro-independence parties. Another thing is that ordinary laws need, for their approval or modification, an absolute majority in the Congress of Deputies, that is, fifty percent plus one of the total votes of MPs in the lower house, which is reached when there are 176 votes in favour.
Considering that PSOE and Unidas Podemos have a total of 155 seats, they need 21 to reach the 176 mark and ERC alone contributes 13. In other words, if Sánchez wants to, he can. It's quite another matter if he doesn't want to, and ERC don't want to use a red button like interrupting the legislature to force him to do so. Verbally, ERC has already flirted with the idea of forcing a change of pace on the work rate of the Spanish legislature, which is very poor in terms of results, in which there is only that of the pardoning of the Catalan political prisoners, and first the general secretary, Marta Rovira, stated that 'they had run out of faith in the PSOE and recently Catalan minister Vilagrà raised the tone by asserting that they were gambling the future of the legislature if they did not put the amendment of the Penal Code on track.
The latest public movements of the Spanish government on this issue have been a mixture. While Iceta insisted in the official speech that there is no political majority, the defence minister, Margarita Robles, nuanced that the reform of the Penal Code must be carried out because it is a social necessity and never for a specific case, in reference to president Carles Puigdemont, exiled in Belgium. All this, forgetting that Puigdemont has said both actively and passively that he will not accept hypothetical personal solutions and that what is needed is an amnesty law that puts the end to all open processes.
Everything points to the fact that the current stalled status of the reform, moving neither forward nor backward, will end up being its definitive situation and that the debate will be pursued more in the media than from behind the podium of Congress. The PSOE has entered electoral campaign mode and, with some very difficult battles ahead, it will not cross its red lines. I very much fear that the reform of the Penal Code will be left for another legislature. Or forever.