Spain's public works minister and PSOE's national secretary, José Luis Ábalos, has this Monday rejected the possibility that Pedro Sánchez's government might intercede with public prosecutors for them to reduce the charges against those being investigated over last year's Catalan referendum. According to PSOE's second-in-command, "the Spanish government cannot be called on to intervene with respect to the public prosecutor in this way or another". "No, no we won't do anything", he stressed, since it "would be the recognition of a scandal over prosecutorial independence". In other words, public and obvious interference.
That, however, was the proposal suggested in a press conference by the Catalan government's vice-president and economy minister, Pere Aragonès, after his meeting in Madrid last week with Spanish deputy PM and treasury minister, María Jesús Montero. Aragonès said that the Spanish state had "many tools" to "lighten" the case against last year's Catalan referendum, like the public prosecution service and the state's legal advice service. The comments came after a German court refused to extradite president Carles Puigdemont on charges of rebellion, only considering doing so over the charge of misuse of public funds.
Aragonès suggested this "lightening" could be in exchange for ERC supporting the 2019 budget. Montero said, however, that the central government would limit itself to its competences and hadn't yet started considering the budget negotiations.
Ábalos also attested that the Supreme Court can try president Puigdemont for different charges to the other prisoners and ministers in exile, against whom prosecutors are maintaining the charges of rebellion and sedition. He said he doesn't agree with the independence movement's arguments which suggest it wouldn't make sense to try Puigdemont for misuse of public funds and the others for rebellion, which carry severer sentences.
On that topic, the PSOE official said that he "doesn't believe it's so clear he was the head who led the rebellion" because "there were many responsibilities and I don't believe there was someone at the head". Ábalos added that it will be the legal process which will have to "individually" determine the liabilities of all the suspects and that "politically" it's not clear that the process was headed by a single person "because there are people responsible who weren't in the government".