Montero justifies repealing sedition to favor dialogue, compared to PP and Puigdemont who prefer "confrontation"

He rejects that the decision is "exchange currency: "talking about compensation is absurd"

SAN FERNANDO (CÁDIZ), 11 Nov. (EUROPE PRESS) -

The Minister of Finance and Public Function, María Jesús Montero, today justified the abolition of the crime of sedition to favor dialogue in Catalonia against the position of the PP, Puigdemont and Junts per Cataluña, who she assures prefer confrontation to obtain revenue electoral.

In this sense, he argued that the reform of the crime of sedition is part of "an effort by the Government, by President Sánchez" to improve coexistence within Catalonia and in its relationship with the rest of the country, convinced that "the coexistence is the most important task that any politician has".

Montero has argued in this regard that the balance presented by the Government chaired by Pedro Sánchez on this point is that "after these four years of President Sánchez's arrival in La Moncloa, it can be said that there is a greater climate of dialogue, a greater climate of coexistence" and announce that "that is what we are going to continue doing".

Speaking to the media in San Fernando (Cádiz), before presiding over the awards ceremony in the framework of the V National Journalism Conference, organized by Publicaciones del Sur, he brandished the legacy that the Government has faced in the relationship between Spain and Catalonia because it has recalled that "in 17 our country suffered a crisis of coexistence that forced politics to re-establish the climate of dialogue, of normality, of coexistence, which must be the dominant note in progress from Spain".

"We are promoting the homologation, the Europeanization, so that it is an analogous crime with other European Penal Codes", the minister added on the spirit of the reform.

"The president always stated that the Government was going to carry out all the actions aimed at increasing the climate of dialogue and coexistence" in Catalonia, the minister maintained regarding the roadmap maintained by the Government, who then invoked that "today we are assisting to a situation in Catalonia that is nothing like the one this Government inherited in 2017", among which it has included "riots in the street", while it has lamented that "some are determined to promote tension, polarization and confrontation".

The PSOE general secretary has also placed the "PP, Puigdemont and Junts per Cataluña" on the same side, parties and former president of the Generalitat to which she has attributed that "they believe they have more electoral revenue with a debate of confrontation, of demonization of the other", while he has claimed the different behavior of the PSOE in the opposition when a PP government had to face the declaration of independence.

"For dialogue to take place, there must be an attitude from everyone to try to reach an understanding", argued the Minister of Finance, who specified that "the spirit of dialogue, of understanding, does not depend only on the Government of Spain, it depends on everyone" , and has warned that "we still have a long way to go to make understanding possible", to then reject that the reform of the crime of sedition is a bargaining chip because "coexistence has no possible bargaining chip".

"Talking about compensation is absurd", the Minister of Finance has continued, wielding the reform of the Penal Code to change the crime of sedition from the approval of the General State Budgets for 2023 because she has maintained that "the Budgets of the State could have been extended" and infer that "it has nothing to do with the debate on the Budgets" and yes with the Government's intention to "gather and provide the conditions to go to a situation of understanding and coexistence".

Montero has considered that the beneficiaries of the debate on the change of the crime of sedition are "all those who lived better with the conflict in Catalonia", to reproach here the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, that "the statements of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, about the Government's desire to imprison the opposition, and conclude that the thought of the leadership of the PP is that "it thinks that inciting hatred, the confrontation indirectly causes profits in the polls".