Felipe González has reiterated his well-known position against judicial relief for those involved in the illegal 1-O referendum, adding the suggestion that citizens be given the option to speak out on the matter. “What do they want to do with a model amnesty?” [Carles] Puigdemont, why don’t I 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 fraud”. To which he added: “Can you change your mind? Yes. Can you do it every day and for the reasons that we see that you are changing your mind? 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 also 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 believes that the approach being made about 1-O is “not reasonable”: “What they are asking us is to recognize that what they did is the right thing and what they did “The Spanish State, and therefore the institutions, was repressive, incorrect, and did not respect freedoms.”
Without mentioning Sánchez by name even once, 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 minorities despise majorities and say ‘since you need my vote, I’m going to make you urinate blood’… “, he slipped.