Normalization? That of Canada and Alberta

Those who were political prisoners are already amnestied. This morning, the minister Lluís Puig tweeted:

“The moment has arrived, today I am going to the Songs of Freedom in Terrassa, the little land where I was born and lived until 9 years ago. And tomorrow heading to Parliament, from where I left on October 27, 2017.” Well, welcome, Minister. And we hope that you do not have any problems, given that the case is still not archived.

In contrast, yesterday was a day of unreserved celebration for Oriol Junqueras, Jordi Turull, Dolors Bassa and Raül Romeva, who will be able to be eligible again or work at the public university, after the Supreme Court has amnestied them. Tomorrow, Minister Toni Comín will go to Madrid to swear the Constitution in order to take possession of his seat as a Member of the European Parliament, and the big one will remain, the return of Carles Puigdemont, which he himself has foreseen once the case is archived and the elections of November 29 have passed.

Yesterday, in another tweet, Puigdemont said that “dragging their feet, late and grumbling, but the Supreme Court had no choice but to sign the capitulation”. And it is a fairly accurate description of the interlocutory order that Supreme Court judge Manuel Marchena signed yesterday, who attacked the Constitutional Court for having validated the amnesty. Marchena spoke of “superfluous epithets” and “manifestly dispensable and absolutely unnecessary considerations”. Specifically, speaking of the writing from the Constitutional Court signed by magistrate Conde Pumpido, he said that:

“The unnecessary grandiloquence of the terms reveals the desire to adorn a reasoning that is invasive of the jurisdictional sphere corresponding to the Supreme Court with expressions meant to camouflage the intensity of the interference”. What was he complaining about? Well, about the fact that the Constitutional Court reprimanded the Supreme Court for having made an “extensive and unpredictable interpretation” of the amnesty.

Yesterday's event was a huge clash between the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court. Marchena says that the Constitutional Court “has expanded to unprecedented limits in its own history” its powers and points out that there were five conservative Constitutional Court magistrates who issued a dissenting opinion. In short: Marchena’s toy has lasted him seven years. His sentence for the political prisoners was issued in October 2019. That “go get them!” is over. It has ended with the State forgetting the facts; the accused will have their criminal records erased and, if Spain were different, with a warning to the State that there was no crime, at least not the one finally charged, so that in the future the Spanish state should not be able to act the same way in similar circumstances.

But everyone knows that this will not be the case, that it is very nice to say that today what should never have left politics returns to it. How is it done? How is it done so that the state does not dedicate its spies, its police, its ambassadors, its head of state and its judges to persecuting a referendum. How is it done to be like Canada, where the province of Alberta has just been asked whether it wanted to start the process towards independence (and said no). The amnesty sought institutional, political and social normalization in Catalonia, but the problem is that in 50 years of democracy no kind of political will to be normal in national questions has been manufactured. I refer to the evidence: We have an amnesty due to a fluke. Because Sánchez needed the votes of the independence supporters. No. The normality of Alberta catches us an ocean away.

Good morning.