• Politics The Catalan business elite takes the side of pardons: "Better get them out, in jail they are martyrs"

  • Círculo de Economía Casado confronts Catalan businessmen over pardons: "They will only bring frustration. Nationalism is insatiable"

The president of CEOE,

Antonio Garamendi

, has unleashed a controversy with statements to RTVE in which he does not reject the granting of pardons. He himself qualifies his words to this newspaper in conversation in Barcelona on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the Círculo de Economía.

RTVE titled the interview with Garamendi with this phrase: "If things are normalized, welcome are the pardons." The assertion has caused discomfort in other directors of the employer's association consulted by this newspaper and the rejection of members of the PP such as the deputy secretary

Antonio González Terol

. However, Garamendi points out to EL MUNDO that he has not wanted to express support for the grace measure in favor of the jailed procés leaders.

"CEOE has no position on that and is not going to enter," he

says. But he does not reject it either: "Pardons are a power of the Government and

are part of the rule of law

."

As for his phrase of welcoming, Garamendi specifies that he has said it in the sense of with the condition that they lead "to the fulfillment of the Constitution" and the arrival of institutional stability and normalization in Catalonia, which he considers a key community for the Spanish economy.

The CEOE president claims that supporting the pardons "is a legitimate opinion, the world of Catalan business sees it from one point of view, in other parts of Spain it is seen from others and my obligation is to maintain a balance."

Both the leader of Vox,

Santiago Abascal

, and the party itself have disqualified Garamendi in their official accounts and have placed him next to the "coup plotters."

Also the parliamentary exporter of the PP, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, has charged against "the very serious responsibility of the elites"


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