It took a long time. The word amnesty was heard for the first time in Cibeles four and a half hours after the start of the regular plenary session of the Madrid City Council, which begins the political course in the capital, after the elections and after a quiet summer in the Madrid executive. The People’s Party has submitted the same motion to reject the amnesty law – a demand from former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont in support of a hypothetical investiture of Pedro Sánchez – in all Spanish municipalities, which is expected to be implemented in all municipalities where the PP has an advantage absolute majority, as happened this Thursday in Madrid, or they govern in a coalition with Vox.
“The city of Madrid has the opportunity to say yes to the constitution, yes to coexistence, yes to tolerance, yes to equality, yes to freedom, yes to democracy, yes to the rule of law,” said Mayor José Luis Martínez Almeida, in a speech, which lasted barely three minutes and in which he attacked the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, for “his limitless, excessive and unscrupulous ambition”. Moderate applause from the Volksbank. That’s why he turned to opposition leader Rita Maestre and socialist faction spokesman Reyes Maroto. “If I told you in this plenary session that you are stupid beasts in human form, genetically inferior to the Catalans, I would get into an argument, you will agree with those who called it that not only for you but for everyone “the Spaniards.”
The first answer – which was not such – came from Vox spokesman Javier Ortega Smith, whose party presented several amendments to the Popular Party’s proposal, but only had an impact on two. First, that all parties represented in Congress avoid any dialogue with parties that promote amnesty. Secondly: “If in the first point it is said that we reject any kind of amnesty for any Spanish citizen, we add ‘or foreigner’ because it cannot happen that a foreign person on national territory can benefit from precisely this amnesty .” The amendments were rejected in their entirety.
The fight for the yes or no amnesty of the Madrid plenary session – which took place on the day of the congress’s recess after the failed first debate on investiture by Alberto Núñez Feijóo – did not last more than 15 minutes, although it raised the tone somewhat of a session, otherwise decaffeinated and where topics such as food stipends, tree felling for work on line 11, cleaning of cantons, kindergartens, environmental initiatives, road safety, Bicimad or construction of sheltered housing were mentioned. Against the proposal of the Popular Party (29 councilors) against the amnesty, Más Madrid (12 councilors) and PSOE (11) voted against it, while Vox (5) voted in favor.
“Here Mr. Almeida puts forward this proposal because his party asked him to do so, with that ridiculous bravery that no city councilor could hide in this debate. Hiding from whom? About what? “Yours?” replied Maestre, to slight boos from the popular councilors and loud applause from Más Madrid. The opposition leader told the mayor that the proposal was a “complete disappointment”: “Your problem, gentlemen from the Popular Party, is that you are fed up with Spain.” You have called all the rest of us anti-Spanish , and when Spain went to vote, they said no to you and those at the top.”
The Socialists have put forward a counter-proposal that “calls on the next Spanish government to continue to make dialogue within the constitutional framework an instrument to improve coexistence between Catalans and between them and the rest of Spain.” The group’s spokesman, Reyes Maroto, accused Almeida of creating “a circus” and a “obscurity” with the motion to reject the amnesty and of putting the interests of the party above the residents of Madrid. “Whenever the citizens put the Popular Party in opposition, the apocalypse of the disintegration of Spain begins, the threat to the equality of the Spanish people, but when the Popular Party needs the nationalists to govern, it does everything necessary,” he criticized. The same proposal will be voted on in the Madrid Assembly on October 5th.
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