The Amnesty Deal, Again & more – 9th Nov 2023

Buenos días from Dulles! This is the Rorshok Spain Update from the 9th of November twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Spain.

Striking a deal between Parties PSOE and the progressive independentist party Together for Catalonia, or Junts per Catalunya, isn’t easy. They are encountering more obstacles than expected in agreeing on the amnesty law’s scope. Junts' members have pushed for the amnesty to apply to other cases that don’t strictly relate to the twenty fourteen and twenty seventeen Catalan self-determination referendums, but that had to do with its organization.

It’s a tricky subject because the possibility of granting amnesty to those involved in the Catalan referendums isn’t so popular among citizens from provinces outside of Catalonia, so giving the proposed law more reach wouldn’t go down so well. In addition, the PSOE would lose support from other more conservative factions, which would further endanger Pedro Sanchez's opportunity to form a government.

Not just people in Spain are concerned about the amnesty law negotiations. So Didier Reynders, the European Commissioner for Justice, asked for more information from the Spanish authorities “as regards the personal, material and temporal scope of this envisaged law.”

However, the amnesty law isn’t the only request of the Republican Left of Catalonia or ERC and Junts. The Catalan provincial government wants to be in charge of Rodalies, Catalonia’s main railway network. Even though the Spanish national government currently controls it, the Catalan provincial government has been vying to get its hands on it for years.

New developments have put Sanchez’s investiture into question once again. The Socialist Party, or PSOE’s secretary, Santos Cerdán, traveled to Brussels on Monday, the 6th, to hash out the finer details of the investiture agreement with Carles Puidgemont, the former Catalan president.

However, one judge recently threw a new wrench in the deal between Sanchez and the Catalan parties. Judge Manuel García Castellón announced that he would call Puigdemont for an interview as part of the investigation into the alleged terrorism crimes of the Democratic Tsunami, a twenty nineteen political organization that encouraged Catalonian civil disobedience.

Until now, only ERC members, including party secretary Marta Rovira, have been investigated, but now they have also called the former Catalan president in for questioning.

It’s not like Spain’s other political forces are staying quiet. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the conservative People’s Party or Partido Popular, has called for a protest on the 12th of November to oppose Sanchez’s deal with the Catalans.

Meanwhile, the nationalist conservative party Vox is putting together a formal accusation against the acting president that they plan to present to the Supreme Court. The party president, Santiago Abascal, announced on Monday the 6th that the party would use every legal resource available to oppose Sanchez and the PSOE’s “coup.”

Both parties consider that passing an amnesty law would be an attempted violation against the rule of Spanish law.

Speaking of Vox, they didn’t just limit themselves to filing paperwork. On the evening of Sunday, the 6th, they organized a rally against the proposed amnesty law. Prominent party members were there, including party president Santiago Abascal. The almost 4,000 attendees planned to march to PSOE headquarters on Ferraz Street in Madrid and stay there, but the situation turned violent.

According to reports, protesters began trying to break through the barriers set around the Socialist Party’s headquarters. They also lit flares and began throwing glass bottles at the Police, who tried to contain the situation by using tear gas, rubber bullets, and smoke bombs. Pedro Sánchez condemned the protest, tweeting that “To attack the PSOE offices is to attack democracy and all those who believe in it."

Moving on to the Economy. The Constitutional Court rejected a legal challenge to the “solidarity tax” submitted by Isabel Díaz Ayuso -she submitted the challenge, not the solidarity tax law. She is the current president of the community of Madrid. Pedro Sánchez’s government put forward this tax on large fortunes in December twenty twenty-two to help people deal with the rise in the cost of living and the increase in energy prices because of the war in Ukraine.

Hilariously the challenge argued that the tax invaded the individuals’ financial and fiscal competencies and could disincentivize people from saving and investing.

In unrelated news…

They say you should love your neighbor, and the people of Rabós, a town in Spain near the border with France, certainly do. What they don’t like is the French government since it suddenly decided to close most of the smaller routes that connected Rabós with its counterpart on the other side of the border, Banyuls-sur-Mer.

Spaniards used the routh through Col de Banyuls, to flee to France during the Spanish Civil War, and many Jews and members of the Allied forces used it in the opposite direction.

A spokesperson for the French government stated the closures were for security reasons and to crack down on illegal migration. However, citizens of both countries have been protesting the closures.

Still on violence, and unpleasantries, on Sunday, the 4th, a motorist killed a taxicab driver in Barcelona over an argument. The fifthy-three-year-old man was taken to a hospital immediately after the beating, but did not survive.

According to Tito Álvarez, spokesperson for the taxi company, the man had switched shifts with his niece the day he died. Álvarez also mentioned another taxi driver had recorded the entire scene with his cellphone and that the evidence was promptly handed over to local police.

The European Commission recently passed a reform that decreased the basic period of data protection for new medicines from eight to six years. This means that third parties will be able to access data on those new drugs to produce generic versions and put them on the market much sooner than they previously could, benefiting consumers. This will effect Spanish drug companies and consumers when implemented this coming year.

The Catalonian Education Council, or CEMB, called for a meeting on Thursday, the 9th, to discuss the subject of phones in schools. The topic has been heavily debated amongst the population in general, so the council decided to open the debate to all council members and have it in-person rather than online.

Teachers all over the country have been advocating for a ban on the use of devices in schools, and this is one thing both they and parents agree on, at least partially. Recently, several mass messaging groups run by parents have sprung up. Their aim is to use social pressure to convince families not to buy their children smartphones.

To wrap up this Update. It’s time to make plans for winter break. Most Spanish ski resorts are getting ready to begin operations in only three weeks. This year has been the hottest on record, but optimistic weather predictions have given them hope that their peaks will be covered in snow soon.

That said, they also have a plan B in case the snow doesn’t come. According to Joaquim Alsina, director of the Catalan Mountain Stations Associations, most resorts in Europe and across Catalunya have been heavily investing in setting up snow production systems to build a solid powder base that could last them all season.

And that's it for this week!

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