The People's Party (PP) has decided to pick up José María Aznar's gauntlet and is to call "a major event" in Madrid against the amnesty proposal, on the weekend of September 23rd and 24th, just before the Spanish Congress debates the investiture of conservative leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo as new prime minister. This was announced this Wednesday by the general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra. "The PP will stand alongside all the citizens who want to demonstrate there", added Gamarra, affirming that the event will show the Spanish public's "rejection" of a possible pact between Socialist (PSOE) leader Pedro Sánchez and the Catalan president-in-exile Carles Puigdemont which would include an amnesty law to end the prosecution of those involved in the Catalan independence process.
The PP spokesperson in the Congress of Deputies told television network Antena 3 that an amnesty law does not fall within the framework of the Spanish Constitution, and for that reason she also justified her party's participation in a demonstration in Barcelona, called on October 8th by the anti-independence group Societat Civil Catalana, which is also opposed to the amnesty. In fact, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has already confirmed her attendance at the event in the Catalan capital.
Far from rejecting the statements made on Tuesday by former Spanish prime minister Aznar, the PP has defended them and has already begun to carry out his propositions. The former People's Party leader had called for a repeat of the anti-terrorism protest initiative of the 2000s, "Basta ya!" ("We've had enough!"), this time directed against the Catalan amnesty, and called for mobilization against an agreement between the PSOE and Together for Catalonia (Junts). The former PM's words caused indignation in the acting Spanish government, whose spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, condemned them at the press conference following Tuesday's cabinet meeting.
According to Gamarra, Sánchez's executive has "misrepresented" Aznar's declarations in order to create a "smoke screen" and divert attention from the PSOE's negotiations with other political parties, especially their possible pacts with the pro-independence parties and the "fugitive from justice" Carles Puigdemont. "It would be ridiculous if we couldn't mobilize against what some are proposing, which is outside the constitutional framework", which, she asserted, the Socialists are doing to obtain a handful of votes and "perpetuate themselves in power".
The Spanish government accuses Aznar of making a "coup" speech
On Tuesday, the Spanish government spokesperson accused ex-PM Aznar of making a "call for a coup" in the mobilization against the amnesty that he encouraged. The PSOE politician asserted that, in her opinion, the words were intolerable coming from someone who has been at the head of the Spanish executive. She also recalled that Aznar's words "are not new" within the PP. "What will be next? A call to an uprising?" Rodríguez asked rhetorically at the press conference on Tuesday, also remarking that Aznar "has had no credibility" ever since he tried to make Spanish voters believe that ETA had been the author of the Atocha attacks in 2004.