Bolaños admits that the Government may suffer "some wear and tear" due to the reform of the Penal Code

It seems logical that the Prosecutor's Office asks Llarena to include the crime of public disorder in the prosecution of Puigdemont

MADRID, 18 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Minister of the Presidency, Relations with the Courts and Democratic Memory, Félix Bolaños, admitted this Wednesday that the Government may suffer "some wear and tear" due to the reform of the Penal Code that eliminates the crime of sedition and reforms that of embezzlement.

Bolaños has affirmed that he feels "comfortable" with this penal reform because, as he points out, he wants the Spanish Penal Code to resemble Europe and that the crimes included in it resemble those that are in force in neighboring countries such as France, Germany, Portugal and Italy.

Thus, it has indicated that this forms part of the useful policy of understanding although it has recognized that it may have a certain cost. "It may have some wear, but we are in the Government to solve problems," he stressed in an interview on Telecinco, collected by Europa Press.

In his opinion, the crime of sedition "was not European", it was not accepted in neighboring countries because it had a "disproportionate" penalty and that is why one of aggravated public disorder was included, as he has defended. For this reason, he sees it as "logical" that the Prosecutor's Office has asked magistrate Pablo Llarena to include in his prosecution the escaped process leaders this new criminal type, since the magistrate had only included embezzlement and disobedience.

On the possible return to Spain of the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who fled in Belgium, Bolaños has indicated that it has been proven and proven that with the old crime of sedition "it was not going to happen" because the European courts "did not grant any type of extradition", as he has maintained. "Now with the new Penal Code we are going to see, it will be a matter of the courts, the Supreme Court and the European courts", he pointed out.

Likewise, he has affirmed that "it was painful, as a Spaniard" to see that Puigdemont was on the run and therefore he wants the law to be complied with and the former president to be accountable before the Justice "as soon as possible".

On the other hand, when asked about the fact that the independentistas maintain that they will try events like those of October 1, 2017 again, Bolaños has responded forcefully. "They are not going to do it again", he pointed out, while he recalled that the leader of Junts Jordi Sánchez acknowledged that the process had ended.

Regarding the holding of a referendum or a consultation, he has indicated that they are "past solutions" that "in no case are they going to be applied" and that they "belong to another era." Thus, he has added that the independence movement wants to isolate Catalonia from the rest of Spain and Europe while the Government wants the opposite, that it be an economic engine.

In this regard, he recalled that in the agreements signed with the Generalitat at the dialogue table held in summer, both parties agreed to engage in politics "within the institutions and in accordance with the law". "You have to look for agreements that are transversal, that overcome the conflict of 2017 and go to agreements of 70 or 80%," he pointed out.