Editorial, 18 November 2023
Rally in Madrid against the amnesty, this Saturday. Laura Mateo
The Government Delegation puts the attendance at 170,000, but the organisers put it at one million. Fernando Savater has declared that “Catalonia and the Basque Country belong to all Spaniards”.
Hundreds of thousands of people came to Madrid’s Plaza de Cibeles on Saturday to rally against the amnesty for the procés.
The Government Delegation puts the attendance at 170,000 people, although the civic organisations organising the rally put it at up to one million. During the rally, the philosopher Fernando Savater and the writer Félix Ovejero read speeches.
Both have charged against the pacts of Pedro Sánchez’s government with the separatist parties to guarantee his investiture. Precisely, the future law that amnesties the leaders of the separatist process is one of these conditions, which the PSOE has accepted.
Political leaders, such as the president of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, attended the rally on Saturday. Also, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
For his part, Savater stated that “Catalonia and the Basque Country belong to all Spaniards”. The philosopher from San Sebastian called for the demonstrations against the amnesty, which have been taking place for half a month in Madrid’s Calle Ferraz, in front of the national headquarters of the PSOE, to continue. “It’s time for the brave!”, he encouraged, before calling for Carles Puigdemont “to be escorted, but to [the prison of] Alcalá Meco”.
Speaking to the press, Núñez Feijóo called on Pedro Sánchez’s government “not to build walls” and called for “a return to coexistence and the rule of law”.
The alarms of democracy are on,” he said of the central government’s pacts with the Catalan pro-independence supporters, which have resulted, among other consequences, in the future law that amnesties those convicted and indicted for the “procés”.
At the rally, held in front of Madrid City Hall, Feijóo criticised “the fraud, lies and humiliation in which, unfortunately, this legislature is being focused”.
Likewise, the Galician leader regretted that the Government is attacking the division of powers, coexistence, and judicial independence.
Especially after two of Sánchez’s partner parties – the PNV and Junts, to which Carles Puigdemont belongs – registered their request in the Congress of Deputies this Friday to create commissions of enquiry to address the so-called Operation Catalonia and the involvement of the National Intelligence Centre (CNI) in the jihadist attacks on Las Ramblas. “They attack the independence of judges,” the PP leader said.
“It is one thing to have power and another to be right,” Feijóo summed up Pedro Sánchez’s attitude. “We will not tire of denouncing outrages,” he concluded his brief statement to the press, before joining the rally along with other leaders of his party.
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