The PSOE put Pedro Sánchez’s investment on the road. The price to be paid has been agreed upon and closed: the amnesty of the leaders of the 1-O coup d’état, a condition demanded by the independence movement to support their inauguration. “He agreed with Junts for amnesty: “It’s total,” as OKDIARIO learned from socialist sources. Meanwhile, their leader, Carles Puigdemont, also asked for the forgiveness of the debt of 74,000 million euros owed by Catalonia to the FLA and a “recognition” as a nation, although this last concept was “abandoned in negotiations”, according to the same source.
It took only three months for Sánchez to lie again about his transfers to coups. “Of course, this government will not accept amnesty,” he said less than a year ago. And just three days before the 23J election, the president puffed his chest for not giving the referendum or amnesty. This Saturday, he fulfilled the trick by publicly defending an illegal measure like amnesty before the Federal Committee of the PSOE.
“In the name of Spain, in the interest of Spain, in the defense of coexistence between Spaniards, today I defend the amnesty of Catalonia for the events that happened in the last decade,” he declared in his open speech to the Federal Committee. Sánchez assured that they do not plan “now” to approve an amnesty, but he emphasized “making a virtue of necessity”, to the applause of North Korea by the rest of the socialist executive, except for Emiliano García-Page.
As already announced by OKDIARIO, the draft of the explanatory memorandum of the amnesty law—proposition of the organic law and conditions not anymore to get the seven Junts votes needed to support the investiture of Pedro Sánchez—is called the “Organic Law of Amnesty for Institutional Coexistence.” Regarding the inclusion of the recognition of Catalonia as a “nation”, the formula is the recognition of the law of “rights” of Catalonia as a “national minority, a concept already enshrined in the constitutional basis of the European Union, the Treaty of Lisbon. Instead, Junts will parade its urgent need for a referendum, although this does not mean rejecting it completely.
Cancel the debt of 74,000 million
Once the amnesty was agreed, Junts also negotiated with the PSOE to forgive the Generalitat’s debt to the Spanish Government, estimated at 74,000 million euros in credits from the Autonomous Liquidity Fund (FLA), the only available means of line of credit from the state to the autonomies, according to the official data of the Catalan Government itself, to which OKDIARIO has access.
As reported by this media, Sánchez is ready to accept another amnesty to satisfy Junts, in this financial case, from a debt that is growing at a staggering rate of 9.9 million a day, or, in other words, 412,500 euros per hour. According to official data verified by the Bank of Spain, from January 1 to June 30, the debt of the Generalitat to the State increased to 1,804 million euros. That is the difference between the credits received and the amortized FLA credits during that period. The Generalitat’s total public debt on June 30 amounted to 86,800 million, of which 73,110 (84.3%) fell behind all the Spanish for the FLA. And the number is increasing every month.
At the same time as putting amnesty and debt forgiveness on the table, Junts already proposed to the PSOE in September the condition of collecting all taxes, implementing transfers regarding pensions, and 19% of Next Generation funds in Europe with retroactive effects. There he asked to transfer the powers to the Tax Agency of Catalonia so that the Generalitat can collect all taxes and eventually provide a “solidarity fee between Catalonia as a country and the Spanish State.”
The party led by Carles Puigdemont estimates the debt of the Spanish State to Catalonia at 450,000 million euros, taking into account 50,900 million in infrastructure deficits, 375,000 million in social goods, and 30,000 million in pensions “the last thirty years of underfinancing.”
