Feijo says any European ‘state party’ rejects amnesty for Catalans

The President of the Spanish People’s Party (PP, right), Alberto Nunez Feijoo, said this Friday that any European “state party” would refuse the amnesty requested by Catalan independence activists, and stressed that the Socialists said the same thing “until six days ago “

In a meeting with foreign press in Madrid, including Luza, Feijoo defended that amnesties are usually held due to “moments when freedoms are not guaranteed or there is no democratic legal system”, which does not happen in Spain, where there is a Constitution and laws ” homologated by the laws of European democratic countries.”

“I am convinced that no member state in the European Union will accept this,” he said of the request for amnesty for those convicted or accused of Catalonia’s 2017 attempt at self-determination, which included an illegal amnesty. referendum and unilateral declaration of independence.

One of the accused is the then president of the regional government, Carles Puigdemont, who lived in Belgium since 2017 to avoid justice in Spain, and who this week said that the party of which he is a member, Together for Catalonia (JxCat), is ready to lead talks on the viability of Spain’s next chief executive after the July 23 elections if an amnesty is granted to independents.

“I don’t want to be that kind of president,” Feijoo told reporters this Friday.

“I’m not going to come into government on terms imposed by a gentleman who escaped justice,” said the PP leader, who won the election but has so far failed to muster the necessary support in parliament to secure his entry into office. as leader of the government at the vote at the plenary meeting of deputies, scheduled for the 26th and 27th of this month.

Feijão denounced the willingness of the Socialist Party (PSOE), the second party with the most votes in the elections, to negotiate with JxCat to support the appointment of socialist Pedro Sánchez as prime minister.

“We all said no six days ago,” said the PP leader, who read out previous proposals by Sánchez himself and other socialist leaders in which they rejected the possibility of negotiations with Puigdemont or an amnesty for independence supporters, calling for respect for the judiciary and the incompatibility of such measures with the Spanish Constitution, the rule of law and democracy.

According to Feijoo, PSOE lost the elections, but is “ready to do everything to remain in government.”

“Everything that was unthinkable and could happen in Spanish politics has happened in the last five years and, more intensely, in the last two months, or is happening,” he added.

The PP leader reiterated that JxCat received 1.2% of the vote in the legislative elections, while independent parties overall received 6%.

In Catalonia, the PP had more votes than the two big separatist parties that elected deputies (JxCat and Esquerda Republicana de Catalunya), Feijoo added, insisting that pro-independence supporters cannot be the ones imposing governing conditions across Spain.

The PSOE said Feijóo’s inauguration later this month would be a disaster and hoped that Sánchez, the current prime minister, would then be returned to office by a plenary session of MPs with the help of the votes of a “cunning” force of leftists, far-leftists, regionalists, nationalists and independents , who managed to gather on August 17 in the elections of the President of Parliament.