Together for Catalonia (Junts) has slammed the governing Republican Left (ERC) for its "incomprehensible" support for the draft of the sedition reform that the parties of the Spanish government, PSOE and Podemos, presented to Congress on Friday. The party's spokesperson, Josep Rius, warned this Monday that this is a proposal "consistent with ERC's strategy of not interfering, a party that has put Catalan independence on the back burner and prefers to manage a Spanish autonomous community", and he reiterated the party's protests of a reform that "seems to have been drawn up by judge Manuel Marchena", in reference to the presiding judge of the pro-independence leaders trial, because "it captures the spirit of the October 2019 court sentence and all the content of the judicial persecution".
Rius reflected ironically that Pere Aragonès heads "a government tailored to not interfere, filled with pro-autonomous community ministers signed up at the winter market for old school politicians", and he linked these reproaches to the motion that Parliament passed last week past noting that the Republicans have lost the confidence of the majority that allowed the current Catalan president to form a government.
The spokesman emphasized that ERC has been left alone defending the proposal, because no pro-independence party or organization has supported it. "I should reflect", he advised before concluding that "it seems that ERC is enjoying being alone".
Pursuing Puigdemont
The party executive devoted part of its meeting to analyzing the bill and summarized its response in three conclusions: firstly, that it is incorrect to talk about the disappearance of the crime of sedition, because the change is accompanied by the new crime of aggravated public disorder, which can be used "against independentism to increase repression"; that the actions that used to be part of the controversial concept of sedition are now subsumed into concepts such as intimidation; and that the regulation of alleged crimes against public order, as drafted, collides with the exercise of fundamental rights and fundamental freedoms, and opens the door to "biased interpretations of Spanish nationalism".
The spokesman criticized that this reform does not dejudicialize the conflict over Catalonia, that it was agreed "behind the back" of the many people facing reprisals, and that it has a "clear intention to persecute the independence movement and in particular Carles Puigdemont" - according to the statements of the PSOE spokesperson in Congress, Patxi López, and Pedro Sánchez himself.
For all those reasons, he announced that Junts will present amendments with an alternative text that will talk only about the disappearance of the crime of sedition, just as was done decades ago with the persecution of those who refused to accept Spain's compulsory military service. Junts intends to meet the rest of the pro-independence organizations in the coming days to coordinate a response. It will include participation in the demonstration against the law change called by the Catalan National Assembly for December 6th in Barcelona.