The president of the Parlament, Josep Rull, welcomed this Tuesday in the Catalan Chamber the former minister and MEP of Junts, Toni Comín, on his first visit to Catalunya after 9 years of 1-O, underscoring that "it is excellent news for the Generalitat and the nation".
Rull made these statements to the media after receiving Comín in the audience office, where the members of the Mesa del Parlament of Junts and ERC were also present. The representatives of the PSC did not attend on this occasion, unlike what happened at the reception of the Junts deputy Lluís Puig.
After this first meeting, Rull and Comín, who entered the Parlament building alone, went to the offices of the Junts parliamentary group. There, the deputies and advisers present welcomed the former minister with prolonged applause.
During his intervention, Comín claimed the political meaning of his return: "We do not return unscathed, but we return victorious because we had an objective: to make Spanish repression fail, and we have made it fail".
After recounting the personal and family sacrifices that these 9 years outside Catalunya have entailed, he defended that the amnesty represents "a failure of the repression" of the State and a rectification of the strategy followed until now.
The MEP insisted on the role of exile in this outcome: "And without exile, I have said it many times, there would not have been amnesty. Exile has laid the foundations for the amnesty", he stated, recalling the steps that were taken to bring the case to the European courts and judicialize the case.
In addition to reiterating that political conflicts should not be settled in the courts, Comín explained that, on his return, he has found a Catalunya different in many respects, although, in his view, "what remains intact is the right of peoples to carry forward their political projects in a peaceful and democratic manner".
"Institutional dignity" and memory of 1-O
Rull wanted to highlight Comín's attitude during these years, thanking him for preserving "the institutional dignity of the presidency of the Generalitat and also of the Govern" by accompanying the former president and leader of Junts, Carles Puigdemont, after 1-O.
He has stressed that "the exile is not an exile of personal protection, it is of protection of the institution and the institutionality that he represented" in 2017, when he was serving as a deputy and councillor of the Govern headed by Carles Puigdemont.
The president of the Parlament has also recalled that this Monday marked 9 years since the entry into prison of several leaders of the 'procés', including himself, and has called for transforming those experiences "not into rancor or resentment, and yes into hope and the will to tirelessly build this horizon of freedom in Catalunya".