Amnesty, the investiture debate must be the moment of clarity

The municipal and regional elections of May 28 buried the political validity of 15-M. His two political sons, Podemos and Ciudadanos, have already been abandoned by their voters, there will be time to do a detailed analysis of his legacy. Curiously, this political cycle, in electoral terms, ends as it began, with overwhelming majorities on the right in autonomous communities and city councils..

However, the hasty general elections of July 23 have not opened a new political cycle, quite the contrary.. Despite the spectacular electoral results (the PP manages to impose itself as the first political force while the PSOE increases its support by almost a million new voters) there persists a strong electoral weakness of the traditional parties, trapped in a difficult dynamic of imperfect bibloquism, the blocks of the right and the left practically tied and highly polarized, depending on the support of a third block, the nationalist, whose parties have been the authentic hinges of Spanish democracy. Seen in retrospect, this transformation from bipartisanship to bibloquism has strained all political and constitutional seams, giving way to a long period of instability and unprecedented situations, failed investitures and electoral repetitions, which Artemi Rallo so brilliantly narrates in his book Failed Investitures and Constitution unknown (2015-2020).

But if the municipal elections in May close, electorally, the cycle of institutional crisis that opened in 2011, which had been under way since the economic crisis of 2008, the results of the general elections once again put the other underlying crisis at the center of the debate throughout all these years, the territorial crisis, opened with the revision of the Statute of Catalonia in 2006, which will have its most brutal expression in 2017 with the holding in Catalonia of an illegal referendum on October 1 and the proclamation, as solemn and brief as it is ridiculous, of Catalan independence. The drama with which Spanish society experienced these events and the consequent application of article 155, suspending Catalan autonomy with its legal consequences, caused two conflicting phenomena that will determine Spanish political life to this day; In June 2018, the first success of a motion of censure, which gave the Government an alliance between the socialists, the left and the nationalist parties, and, in December of that same year, the reaction from the voters of the right: the emergence of Vox in the Andalusian elections. In order not to forget and not repeat anything from this period, it is recommended to read The Conspiracy of the Irresponsible, by Jordi Amat..

A few days before the more than presumed new inauguration of President Sánchez, it is good to remember that the reason for the success of that motion of censure was not the condemnation of President Rajoy's PP for corruption, but rather the socialist commitment to seek a way out of the stagnation in Catalonia, after the limited political effects of the application of 155 and its judicial consequences. The promise of that first parliamentary coalition that brought Sánchez to Moncloa, supported by his left and the nationalist right parties (PNV and the followers of the old Convergència, already thrown into the pro-independence mountain) was to “deflame” Catalonia.

Today, five years later, ERC has replaced Junts at the head of the Generalitat, both in electoral withdrawal and with loss of influence on the street, they are fighting for the only really important flag: retaining municipal power and preparing again for the battle for very constitutional control of the Generalitat. Nothing is known about that dialogue table, about that narrator who deserved so many rivers of heated ink in the right-wing press.. The pardons for the independence leaders and the reforms of the crimes of sedition and embezzlement have undoubtedly taken their toll on the socialists, a loss of support largely compensated by the poor understanding of a large part of Spanish society of the fiery opposition led by PP and Vox. The de-escalation of the Catalan conflict is a political and social fact, uncomfortable for the PP, which does not find in Catalonia (or in Euskadi) a conservative partner with which to try to form a Government, also uncomfortable for the independence parties themselves, since today the PSC is the the first Catalan electoral force and the PSOE the only formation with the possibility of governing and the ability to dialogue with the nationalist left and right.

And this is where we must place the debate on the amnesty on which a new investiture of President Sánchez depends. Junts' proposal, empowered by an electoral result that gives it the key to the government, as has already happened on previous occasions and as is usual in any pluralist democracy that has abandoned the times of absolute majorities, follows the logic of the agreements that led to the socialists to the Government in 2018. The latent territorial crisis under the management of the pandemic and the economic effects of the war in Ukraine enters a phase in which, with or without a Junts proposal, Catalan society had to face the legal consequences of the process, not to the independence leaders who have already paid for their actions with years in prison to later be partially pardoned, but for many of their followers. To reproach the socialists for taking on this debate now when they denied it in the past or did not contemplate it in their program denotes great naivety.. Demanding elections to position oneself against the amnesty can only respond to bad faith, since some form of forgiveness by a new coalition government was the next logical step from that promise of de-escalation..

Can Junts allow itself to send Spanish politics back to elections, assuming that the next legislatures will be under PP governments, depending on a parliamentary ally, if not a government partner, like Vox? How do the pardoned independence leaders explain to the dozens of followers with cases pending in court that they do not deserve the pardon that their leaders did obtain? But the really relevant question is, does anyone have a political offer to improve coexistence in Catalonia that inspires more agreement? Support for amnesty is far from being the majority, but does strict compliance with the law attract more consensus? Is it the best response for a State to turn the page on such a regrettable episode of collective deception?

Today we only know the independence proposal, which more than demanding amnesty, demands political replacement and review of the role of the State. But we also know that the demand for a new referendum, already legal and agreed upon, is postponed to other political times.. In reality, we still need to know what to expect, that is, what the socialist proposal will be.. What we do know is that all the actions promoted by the socialist governments in recent years have been carried out within the limits of the Constitution, and that their effect has not been to strengthen, but rather to weaken, the independence movement..

The investiture debate must be the moment of clarity. The intervention of the socialist candidate must return Parliament to its role and give public opinion certainty, regardless of whether one is in favor of or against the pardon.. The political, social and economic complexity of the legislature that is starting requires debate on certain facts and focusing on what is important; prevent a new crisis, in this case due to the consequences of a war in the Middle East, from overlapping previous crises, still half resolved.

Joan Navarro is a sociologist, professor of Political Science and Administration at the UCM.

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