Amnesty and democracy

Let's aim the arrow at the target: when this June the Constitutional Court (CC) upholds the Amnesty Law and declares it fully compatible with the Spanish Constitution of 1978, this ruling will come just two years after the unborn Blue Summer, seven years after the motion of censure, and fifteen years after the ruling of the same CC that declared 14 articles of the 2006 Statute of Catalonia unconstitutional, and another 27 articles were subject to interpretation by the same high court. Fifteen years later, your honors, yes, a generation later, a lifetime later, the Catalonia file moves on to another phase.

The ruling will resolve the PP's appeal against constitutionality, only partially accepting it, thus ending a turbulent and truculent period that began with the political ramifications of the previous ruling on the Statute of Autonomy, also related to another appeal against constitutionality by the same PP. Only if it's explained in this way, if these two points are connected in the continuum of space and time—from the Statute of Autonomy to the Amnesty—can everything be better understood. More specifically, that the PP went this time, and for the umpteenth time, to the Constitutional Court to resolve in court what it couldn't win in the legislative branch: the aforementioned Amnesty Law. It's important to remember this because the new voters of 2027, among whom Vox is the leading force, didn't experience any of this. Fifteen years is a long time. They were children or hadn't even been born.

The second part of the legislature is about another theory of Spain, that of total reunion.

Don't forget, for the 2027 elections, that this two-party system, which is bothered by constitutional languages ​​like Basque, Catalan, and Galician and which boycotted the last presidential conference in Barcelona, ​​represents fewer than 6 out of 10 voters. And don't forget that the current Constitution was only voted for by 25% of the current electorate, fewer than 10 million voters. The remaining 75% didn't vote for it.

The PP, therefore, was unable to stop Congress from approving the organic law that is the Statute of Autonomy fifteen years ago, and then from endorsing it in Catalonia. Thus, the appeal of unconstitutionality, then as now, was the last lever to repeal from outside the decisions of popular sovereignty represented in the legislature. In 2010, the Statute of Autonomy was declared unconstitutional, and therefore the will first of the Parliament of Catalonia, then of Congress, and finally of Catalonia itself in a referendum was repealed.

However, in 2025, the upcoming amnesty will be compatible with the Constitution, and the ruling will not technically repeal any popular will. We must heed this historical shift, fortunately fifteen years later, because the Constitutional Court is just as much a Constitutional Court today as it was in 2010. Or, to put it another way, what was valid then should be valid now for the Popular Party. If in 2010 the PP ultimately entrusted its particular vision of Spain's coexistence to a ruling, today it should look at itself in the mirror. Its lack of didacticism, far from diminishing Vox, is consolidating it and upsetting the rest of the electorate that decides elections. For only when the right was plural, behaving democratically and guaranteeing coexistence, did the Spanish people break the tie in its favor. The fear remains: On what theory of Spain would a PP-Vox Council of Ministers be based?

Look, the PSOE is holding on, and that's nothing new. It held on like a wild boar in the fifth legislature. None of the partners have any incentive for this fifteenth legislature to collapse prematurely. And this starting point is valid because it already happened to Felipe González, who, with one more week of campaigning and a Loreg (Regional Electoral Council) that didn't distribute two seats per province, but rather one, and the others proportional to population, for example, would have defeated José María Aznar in 1996, despite the "Go away, Mr. González" and all the similarities you want to find with the current situation. Politics has these nuances. A week after June 23rd, we wrote "Amnesty and Article 92," explaining "amnesty" as the linchpin that unblocked the legislature and "Article 92" as a synonym for democracy, to win reelection. We've already reached the halfway point, and there you have the amnesty. Democracy must now serve to channel political conflicts and remove them from the impossible situation where their judicialization led them fifteen years ago. This is what the second part of the legislature is about. It's about another theory of Spain: that of total reunion.

Next week Two years of tension

Go back to the fifth legislature, "the one of tension," to understand that two long years of confrontation were not enough for the PP to twist the PSOE's arm, just as it will not be the case in the fifteenth, "the one of amnesty and democracy." Aznar only became president when the PSOE ran out of alternative majority. What is happening today, with Sumar and Podemos sharing the investiture majority with Junts, was not possible in 1996 with Julio Anguita and Jordi Pujol. That said, given the current Trumpism, perhaps the great Anguita today would share votes with the very honorable Pujol. Such is the state of affairs in this new world.

The Hawkeye Conference of Presidents

It was evident at the conference of presidents: the autonomous regions, like the Senate, are now a reverberation chamber for the opposition to the majority in Congress. The sacred fathers of the Constitution would be scandalized to see them as a second-reading body for central power. And they would be even more offended to observe that all the PP-led autonomous communities, plus Castilla-La Mancha, are filing appeals of unconstitutionality against the Amnesty Law while simultaneously demonstrating their inability to agree on housing policy and find a solution for the distribution of immigrant minors.