As it was an agreed strategy, Yolanda Díaz emulated Pedro Sánchez and also refused to confront Alberto Núñez Feijóo in Congress. However, despite this coordination, Sumar’s great contribution to the investiture debate of the PP leader was to fill one of the great gaps left by the PSOE: to speak openly about an amnesty for the Catalan independence movement and defend it without complexes as “a opportunity to turn the page.” What Pedro Sánchez shied away from, Sumar’s spokespersons did.
The words of Marta Lois, first, and Enrique Santiago, later, thus prepared the ground to meet the great demand of Carles Puigdemont to give his seven votes. And try to convince people “who have doubts and are not sure what to think.”
Lois denied that the amnesty is to benefit “the political elites”, as the PP says about this pardon to Puigdemont, and presented it as an initiative to relieve “hundreds of anonymous people who were involved in a political conflict.”
“The amnesty is one more step after the pardons to advance a negotiated solution to the political conflict with Catalonia. An opportunity to turn the page and be able to concentrate our energies on the shared challenges that lie ahead,” he said.
In that sense, he legitimized that the amnesty is an “instrument” to “resolve political conflicts in extraordinary moments” and defended addressing it “to strengthen our democratic coexistence.”