MADRID: Spain’s right-wing opposition is enraged over government plans to abolish sedition, the charge used against Catalan separatist leaders, criticizing the move as a gift to pro-independence parties in return for parliamentary support.
Earlier the Parliament approved a bill on Thursday to reform the criminal code to drop what Spain’s left-wing government alliance sees as an archaic offence, replacing it with one better aligned with modern European values.
According to Spanish media reports, the change should be in place before the year’s end,
Rallies convened across Spain to express disapproval
However, in response, the far-right Vox party opposed the move and called for a protest on Sunday, in Madrid while the right-wing opposition Popular Party (PP) has also convened rallies across the country to express its disapproval.
Right-wing parties say eliminating sedition (the charge used to convict and jail nine Catalan rebels over their involvement with a failed 2017 independence bid) will make grounds for another attempt for separation from Spain.
Initially condemned to between nine and thirteen years behind bars, the separatists were pardoned last year by the left-wing government, drawing fury from the Spanish right.
PP lawmaker Edurne Uriarte said amid a parliamentary debate over the planned law changes that it will benefit those in Catalonia who want to stage another coup!”
The situation in other member states
The failed independence bid sparked the worst political crisis in Spain for a long, with the then-Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and many others fleeing abroad to escape trial.
Spain says its efforts to have them expelled have failed because many European countries simply don’t recognize sedition as a crime, with the bill seeking to replace the offence as an “aggravated public disorder”.
Reform crime of sedition
Therefore, the bill aims “to reform the crime of sedition and exchange it with an offence it is tackled in other European democracies,” Sanchez said earlier this month, adding that the crimes committed in 2017 will be there in the penal code, although will be considered as an aggravated public disorder instead of crimes of sedition.
However, Puigdemont has expressed reservations about the legal change, saying those separatists celebrating the move should first learn from the recent past.
The new offence would now carry a maximum penalty of 5 years behind bars, against 15 years for the crime of sedition in past.
Protecting Spanish democracy or political survival
Opposition leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo questioned Sanchez to clarify the situation and whether he is reforming sedition law to protect Spanish democracy or doing all this for political survival.
Alberto added that they will increase the penalties for sedition and rebellion, and will make their criminal offences.
The PP managed to confirm Thursday’s vote was vocal, a rare procedure in Spain in which lawmakers verbally announce their approval or opposition to a bill, to force the more reluctant Socialists to lay their cards clearly on the bench.
Mass disorder to stop law implementation
Spain’s present criminal code defines sedition as “publicly rising up and using mass disorder to stop the implementation of laws, by force or through means outside the law”.
More briefly, the Royal Academy of Spanish Language defines it as a “collective and violent uprising against authority, against public order or military discipline sans reaching the gravity of rebellion”.
The crime has survived various reforms of the legal code, the last of which was in 1995, but critics say it dates back to the 19th century.
Earlier this month Sanchez while pointing to Germany (where sedition was abolished in 1970) said that “we are revising a crime that was enacted in 1822 in Spain, dating back 200 years to when there were still military uprisings”.
