The gap in the Parliament's anti-fascist pact

BarcelonaSince the far-right gained representation in Parliament in April 2021, the PSC, Junts, ERC, Comuns, and the CUP have maintained a pact in which they commit to isolating Vox—and now also the Catalan Alliance—so as to "not normalize or legitimize" their political actions. The anti-fascist pact states that the signatories will not accept the votes of these parties and that they will not be granted a seat in the governing bodies of Parliament. It also ensures that initiatives from these parties will be "prevented" from moving forward. However, with motions (texts that lack the force of law), the pact becomes a dead letter due to the functioning of the chamber.

This is what happened with the Catalan Alliance's text from a few days ago, which called for a ban on all types of Islamic veils in public spaces. The far-right party presented a motion justifying this ban with statements such as "Islam is incompatible with Western values." The motion reached the plenary session with the approval of the roundtable, made up of Junts, ERC, and the PSC (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party). The board of spokespersons, made up of a representative from each party in the chamber, the speaker of the Parliament, and a secretary general, also approved its passage.

According to sources from the roundtable, this body "does not assess the content" of the texts presented. The roundtable "is not a censorship element" in the chamber, they point out, but rather manages procedures, and if the procedure is formally completed, the text is accepted for debate without further discussion, they explain. The same sources warn that if the panel were to assess the content, it could lead to a spiral of censorship, because the line between what should be debated and what shouldn't is sometimes very fine," they say.

The filter of the board of spokespersons

The party spokespersons' committee does have the power to include a bill—or not—on the agenda. Last term, Vox reported to the Constitutional Court that its initiatives were "systematically" stalled before reaching the plenary session, and party sources assure that this continues to be the case in the current term. According to the legal sources consulted, the non-admission of these texts could be justified if the content is considered to violate human rights or incite hatred, but they would surely have to be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. So why wasn't the Catalan Alliance's text halted—or considered halting it? Because it was a motion, not a bill.

Motions are texts presented by parties that derive from a prior interpellation to the Government. Therefore, it's a kind of automatic chain that the spokespersons' committee doesn't break. These are texts that seek to have Parliament express a position or urge the executive branch to act in a specific area. And just as the board of spokespersons has the power to decide the agenda and which proposals are admitted for debate, in the case of motions, the groups have the right to present them more freely.

Although this represents a breach in the anti-fascist pact that gives far-right parties free rein to stir up debate in the chamber, for now, no changes are planned in this regard, especially after the ones they saw a few months ago. The Parliament will reorient the strategy of confrontation with the Catalan Alliance and VoxThe anti-fascist pact regarding voting and governing bodies remains in place, but while until last July the policy was to cut off these parties' interventions in the plenary session when they stigmatized and denigrated vulnerable groups, the chamber has now stopped doing so to prevent the far right from presenting itself as a victim of censorship. In this regard, sources at the committee assure that no avenue has been considered to veto motions with similar content.