Juanma Lamet
Marisa Cruz Madrid
Madrid
Updated Monday, April 8, 2024-13:26
Politics Aragonès mocks Sánchez for his "change of opinion" on the amnesty and warns from the Senate: "The referendum will be inevitable"
Politics Rufián anticipates his return to revitalize the work of ERC in Congress: "Without him, Junts has benefited"
"Catalonia belongs to everyone, as does Madrid." Isabel Díaz Ayuso has focused her speech in the General Commission of the Autonomous Communities on defending that sovereignty cannot be parceled out, because all of Spain belongs to all Spaniards, wherever they reside. The Madrid president, who has given the most impetuous speech of the PP barons, thus wanted to confront the president of Catalonia, given the non-appearance of the three PSOE barons.
In his appearance in the Senate along with five other 'popular' presidents, Ayuso reminded Pere Aragonès that article 2 of the Constitution enshrines the "indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation, the common and indivisible homeland of all Spaniards", thereby which the Catalans have no more rights over their territory than an Almerian or a Coruña native.
"Centuries of history are not available" at the whim "of the independentists" who want to "continue dividing the Spanish and all Catalans," Ayuso proclaimed. "There is no conflict between Spain and its regions. The Government has raised the flag of frontism, lies and betraying the mandate of the polls and the Constitution; we are facing a blow against national unity, democracy and the State of Right programmed and in stages, and that will be unstoppable if we do not react in time," he added in the main passage of his speech. "Sánchez has initiated a constituent process without being legitimized to do so," he added.
The Madrid baroness has provided figures on the hypothetical independence of Catalonia: "It would be born with a mortgage that would exceed 342,000 million euros, or in other words, 120% of its GDP." And with a "hole of more than 4.3 billion euros" in pensions. "Or in other words, almost 240,000 Catalan pensioners would stop receiving this benefit in the event that Spain stops contributing to the Catalan Social Security."
For Ayuso, these are times in which Sánchez "whitewashes the criminal plan dreamed up by ETA and puts those convicted by the Supreme Court for crimes of embezzlement and sedition to write the laws, rewrites the law in favor of convicted criminals to improve the lives of rapists and in which a fugitive from Justice dictates to the Government from Switzerland or Belgium with a Salvadoran mediator what the course of the nation should be. "The Government depends on those who want to liquidate the nation, who are," he assured, "really the ones in charge." "The secessionists only needed a weak government and there they have it, at their feet," he said.
The president of Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, has also pointed out to the President of the Executive: "Equal rights are established by making laws for everyone, but Sánchez does the opposite." And he added that "we must defend" the non-independence Catalans, who "are told to prepare to be foreigners in their own land and to accept their servitude" in the face of those who impose "their xenophobic thinking" on them. This has provoked one of the biggest applauses from his coreligionists.
That, Mañueco concluded, is what the Government should fight, "but it does not do so", but instead "empties the Constitution through the actions." "We are talking about the survival of our democracy," he proclaimed.
The president of Murcia, Fernando López Miras, has focused his intervention on the defense of equality and has assured that the amnesty is like "a Trojan virus" against democracy. In his opinion, the norm "is not the end but the beginning of the secessionist roadmap" whose objective is "self-determination." The problem, he has said, is that "for the first time in our democracy there is someone who is willing to submit to the blackmail and arguments of the separatists and the independentists", referring to Sánchez.
Jorge Azcón, president of Aragón, has maintained that whoever goes against the Aragonese "will demonstrate their political dwarfism." "We are going to be rebels," he said, in defense of the equality of all Spaniards. There he has quoted Benito Pérez Galdós in his 'National Episodes': "Among the dead there will always be a living language to say that Zaragoza does not surrender." "And I extend that to all Aragonese: Aragon does not surrender," he concluded.
The president of the Valencian Community, Carlos Mazón, believes that the reconciliation that the Executive uses as a lever for the amnesty is "an empty word." "I am the one who will not tolerate any more contempt. Citizens in general and in particular those of the Valencian Community are neither trolled nor humiliated, they are respected," he proclaimed, before complaining about "paternalism." and the "arrogance" of "a Government that is in extension." "They have even written out the question with which they want to separate," he stressed, but independence "was always a journey to nowhere," he added.
"With Sánchez, the truth became a posthumous event." This is the summary made by the president of Extremadura, María Guardiola. In her intervention before the General Commission of the CCAA, the Baroness insisted that calling inequality reconciliation is like "calling a stop to pick up the ball from the net." "They break unity and the Government eats, by seven votes, into their hands," she concluded.
Of the rest of the communities, only Catalonia has sent its president. The three regions governed by the PSOE -Navarra. Castilla-La Mancha and Asturias - have declined to defend their position in the Senate. And five others from the PP have sent advisors.
Andalusia and Galicia stand out among them. On the part of the first, the Minister of the Presidency, Antonio Sanz, took the floor, maintaining that the amnesty is "a breach of equality" that will consecrate "first and second-class communities." And the Galician Diego Calvo has stressed that "there are no Spaniards who are more than others."