González asks to "consult the Spanish" about the amnesty and Page criticizes: "The amnesty could be called a necessity"

Felipe González has reiterated his well-known position against judicial relief for those involved in the illegal 1-O referendum, adding the request that citizens be given the option to speak out on the matter.. “What do they want to do a [Carles] Puigdemont model amnesty, because I don't know the other one? Consult the Spaniards,” the former president of the Government launched in an interview on Antena 3.

For the person who led the refoundation of the PSOE – a party for which he assures that he continues to vote -, the fact that Pedro Sánchez denied in the electoral campaign that he was going to bow to this demand of the Catalan independentists and is now negotiating it discreetly with them “is more “closer to stupidity than to fraud”. To which he added: “Can you change your mind? Yes. Can it be done every day and for the reasons we see people changing their minds? No”.

“Would we be talking about amnesty if those seven votes were not essential for an investiture of a progressive Government?” González asked rhetorically in reference to the deputies of Junts per Catalunya (JxCat) on whom the re-election of the acting president depends.. “It is wise to rectify, it is true, and it is foolish to have to do it daily,” he added.

In a position contrary to that of former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who came out this Monday to publicly defend forgiveness for those responsible for the process, who was in charge of La Moncloa between 1982 and 1996, he believes that the approach is “not reasonable.” what is being done about the promoters of 1-O: “What they are asking us is to recognize that what they did is the right thing and that what the Spanish State did, and therefore the institutions, was repressive, incorrect, did not respect freedoms.”

Without once mentioning Sánchez by name, González has also criticized the inflexibility shown by Puigdemont in the conditions he has proposed to support the investiture, which include, in addition to the amnesty, a self-determination referendum in Catalonia.. “Democracy consists of respecting minorities, starting from the basis that minorities respect majorities.”. If the minorities despise the majorities and say 'since he needs my vote, I'm going to make him urinate blood'…”, he slipped.

In this sense, the former president, 81 years old, also wanted to leave a message of concern of “old, old, old”: “Let us preserve the coexistence of the Spanish. Let's not bring the tension from top to bottom, the tension of the elites altering the coexistence of citizens (…). I ask the political leaders of all parties, those who have the ability to hear, listen and analyze, which is not all, I ask them not to induce polarization and confrontation, whatever they think, discuss whatever they discuss, and that in “The big issues will always need majority agreements, not half of society against the other half.”

“Need”

Also very critical of the negotiations of his own party, the president of Castilla-La Mancha has once again been regarding the possible demands of the independence movement that Sánchez could be willing to comply with to ensure his re-election. “There are some who now call the amnesty an amnesty. Others of us may end up thinking that the amnesty could perfectly be called a necessity, they are different things,” said Emiliano García-Page.

Regarding the consultation that Puigdemont will make about the investiture to the Consell of the Republic – the para-institutional entity that he himself created in 2018 to keep the process alive since Waterloo -, the socialist baron has warned that “those who propose referendums to break up Spain or to have privileges they have to have one thing very clear”: “Neither in Catalonia nor in Spain as a whole can one vote for something that openly goes against unity and the Constitution itself”, which “is not voteable”.

Page has also considered that “what amnesty should never be is amnesia”. “If we forget what happened, amnesia can only bring about its repetition,” he stressed during his speech at the presentation of an employment plan in Castilla-La Mancha, which he has agreed with the PP, an agreement of which has highlighted its value taking into account that it governs with an absolute majority. “People want the big parties to disagree on many things, because it follows democratic logic, but not on everything due to obligation and system,” he added.