Did the Spanish Socialist party (PSOE) send emissaries to offer personal solutions to Carles Puigdemont? The exiled president has revealed this and the Socialists have not denied it. Neither has the Spanish government. Of course, from Madrid they wanted to avoid any scenario of reaching out to the ex-president. Even the spokesperson for the Spanish executive, Isabel Rodríguez, avoided referring to him by name and simply called him "this gentleman who is on the run from our country". And then he gave the Pedro Sánchez government's "clear and resounding" position: "This gentleman must come to Spain to comply with justice, to be held to account."
On Sunday, the fifth anniversary of the day in 2017 when he and members of his Catalan government went into exile, president Carles Puigdemont revealed that emissaries of the PSOE had proposed to him to go before the Supreme Court in exchange for a pardon or a modification of the crime of sedition, but he made it clear that he would not accept this "personal solution" because "it would be a political resignation". This Monday, in the press conference following the weekly Spanish meeting, Isabel Rodríguez disavowed the president's statement. And she made use of it to rebuke the opposition: "It is not acceptable for the PP to use Mr Puigdemont as an argument of authority, as a new excuse". And she compared the former president to the PP: "Both of them put the constitutional order at risk."
The background noise to all this is still the possible reform of the crime of sedition in the Penal Code, which the PP has used to justify breaking off negotiations with the Moncloa government palace over the renovation of Spain's highest body of judicial governance, the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ). Over this point, the Sánchez government makes it clear that what is happening is nothing new, that it comes from way back. "Nothing has changed. There is nothing new. The government has a commitment which it expressed in its investiture speech to match [the definition of the offence of sedition] to the other legal systems in our neighbourhood", defended Isabel Rodríguez in different questions about it. And she railed against the PP, who "last week said that they were two different points" - reference to the sedition law and the CGPJ renewal - and today uses the former as an "excuse" to block the latter. She did not go into the details of the hypothetical sedition reform or the planned deadlines.
Impossible even to "play Ludo" with Feijóo
A good part of the press conference this Monday was used to throw darts at PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who was indeed Isabel Rodríguez's target when she said that the judicial renewal had been deadlocked for four years. "Seven months ago we were told that someone new was coming to lead the PP. Feijóo does not lead anything; he obeys the most extreme wing of his party and of this country", criticized the Moncloa spokesperson, who compared him with his predecessor: "To insult, blockade and breach the Constitution, we already had Pablo Casado". She accused the PP of being "in constitutional rebellion" and threw in a metaphor: "You can't even play Ludo with Feijóo because he doesn't respect the rules of the game."
Despite the fact that Unidas Podemos proposes to reduce the parliamentary majorities necessary (currently 60% of MPs) in order to overcome the deadlock in the renewal of the CGPJ, the Moncloa does not want to talk of specific scenarios. Asked repeatedly about the issue, Isabel Rodríguez limited herself to saying that the Spanish government will "comply with the Constitution".