Óscar Puente: "If I were Puigdemont, I would show up in Spain"

Madrid / BarcelonaThe day after the endorsement of European justice to the amnesty everyone builds their own narrative. While the independence movement celebrates the CJEU's decision but warns that this does not end repression, both the Catalan and Spanish governments see their agenda of "reconciliation" validated and claim the end of the "political crisis" between Catalonia and the State. Furthermore, the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, has assured that if he "were Carles Puigdemont, he would now present himself in Spain, without a doubt". "We must stand up to it once and for all," he said in an interview with RNE, as reported by Efe. "If I cannot move freely through a country that has decided I should be free, let us all be ashamed for once, they say it is better to be red for a minute than yellow all your life. I would do it," he assured, since in his opinion it would be "tremendously complicated to understand that Spanish justice tries not to comply" and that it is argued that it is not applied immediately. In fact, Puente considers that the CJEU ruling demonstrates that there is a part of the judiciary in Spain that does not respect the legitimacy of the legislative power, that questions its capacity to decide and that believes it is above it.

Now, the independence movement warns that courts must apply the law. In a press breakfast in Madrid, as part of the Nuevo Economía Fórum, the leader of Esquerra, Oriol Junqueras, warned that the ECJ's ruling is a "political victory", but "incomplete": "The law is not measured only by its approval, but by its application", he said, and in this regard he asked "what happens with Spanish democracy" considering that the courts are not making the rule effective.

Both the Catalan and Spanish governments are now urging Spanish courts to apply the ECJ ruling and make it possible that the amnesty is applied to all its beneficiaries, especially to the "leaders of the Procés", as emphasized by the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños. The spokesperson for the Catalan executive, Sílvia Paneque, argued on Catalunya Ràdio that, "beyond the legal endorsement" of the law, the Luxembourg ruling "allows us to close, in a way, a political, social, and institutional crisis and open a period of normality". And Minister Félix Bolaños remarked on SER radio that the European ruling approves amnesty as a tool for "reconciliation of a whole generation of Catalans".

Today, Catalonia is experiencing political normality, that was our goal and we have achieved it", stated Bolaños, who compared the current scenario with the "unbearable tension" that he claims was experienced in Catalonia and Spain during the years of the Procés.