It had been 13 years since a president of the PP had given an interview to Catalan public radio. The last one was Mariano Rajoy. This Monday, less than 24 hours after demonstrating in Barcelona against the amnesty, Alberto Núñez Feijóo has reset that counter to zero and has attended, from his office in Madrid, to Catalunya Ràdio. And he has verbalized in public what his party had already confirmed to this newspaper in private: that he will appeal the amnesty for the crimes of the ‘procés’ before the Constitutional Court.
How would Feijóo fight the amnesty? “With reason, with morality, with ethics and with the law. It is a reactionary decision and a massive fraud,” said the president of the PP. If this possible law is approved, would you appeal it to the courts? “We have to appeal anything that is unfair, because otherwise we will be complicit in an injustice,” he stressed. Because, in his opinion, amnesty for the crimes of the ‘procés’ “is an act of absolute cowardice.”
To dramatize the “privileges” to Carles Puigdemont and the rest of the possible amnesty recipients, Feijóo has given an analogous example. “Catalans who break the law, from a traffic fine to a Treasury fine, have to comply” and have legal consequences if they do not, “and therefore there cannot be a reduced political elite above the law” the one that is allowed to break the laws without consequences. “This is a transaction between politicians, an unbecoming collusion of the 21st century,” he insisted.
For the leader of the PP, “the amnesty goes against respect for Catalan society”, because “it is not closing” the ‘procés’ or the path to unilateral independence, since those affected have said that they will return to ” reactivate non-compliance with the law”. “This is not burying independence, this is relaunching independence,” because Junts and ERC have not committed “not to do it again.” “The difference between a pardon and an amnesty is that in a pardon it is the State that forgives and in an amnesty it is the State that is forgiven,” he pointed out.
Asked about his intention to give priority, politically, to CataloniaFeijóo responded that “without a doubt” the PP will be seen more in this community. “It is the one to which I have traveled the most together with Andalusia. It will be a priority over what is priority”, that is, so that there are no “privileges” and all Spaniards are equal, he said. “The amnesty is a measure against an unjust right, and here it happens the other way around: the Constitution, the Statute and the Penal Code” are fair and the unfair thing would be to wipe the slate clean. “Who looks after the rights of non-independence people?” he launched into the air.