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Despite divisions, Spain’s hard-left unites for vote

Spain's hard-left decided Friday to join forces on a single political platform for the July 23rd elections, in a boost for Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's reelection hopes.

Published: 10 June 2023 09:21 CEST
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez listens during a press conference in Madrid
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez listens during a press conference in Madrid on June 5, 2023. Spain's hard-left decided Friday to join forces on a single political platform for the July elections. Photo: PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU / AFP

The decision was announced shortly before a midnight deadline for parties to register their intention to run as part of a coalition, although they are not required to provide any individual names until June 19th.

The snap election was called by Sánchez on May 29th, a day after his Socialists and their hard-left coalition partner Podemos suffered a drubbing in local and regional elections.

Since then, Labour Minister Yolanda Díaz has been pushing to rally the hard-left behind her platform Sumar (“Unite”).

READ ALSO: Collapse of Spain’s far-left complicates vote for Sánchez

After days of difficult negotiations, Podemos, which grew out of the anti-austerity “Indignados” protest movement, finally agreed to join the coalition, which includes more than a dozen political groupings.

“This is the broadest agreement ever reached in Spanish democratic history between progressive and ecological forces,” said a statement from Sumar Friday night.

READ ALSO: A foreigner’s guide to understanding Spanish politics in five minutes

Podemos, once Spain’s third largest political force in 2015, entered a coalition government with the Socialists in 2020.

But since then, the party’s appeal has been much diminished by a string of disputes and controversies, and its support collapsed during the May 28 local and regional elections.

READ ALSO: Who won where in Spain’s regional elections?

From Sumar’s perspective, one of the main sticking points in the talks with Podemos had been the role of Equality Minister Irene Montero, the party’s best-known figure.

Some Díaz allies did not want her on the list, and in the end, she was left out.

An outspoken hardliner who has often courted controversy, Montero has faced bitter criticism in recent months, notably over her flagship rape law that paradoxically let some offenders reduce their sentences.

READ ALSO: Spain sees no risk to EU presidency from July snap election

Earlier Friday, Podemos leader Ione Belarra called for the veto on Montero to be lifted, describing it as “not only an injustice but also a serious political error”.

Polls have long tipped the right-wing Popular Party to win next month’s vote, although, without a majority, it would be forced to rely on the far-right Vox to govern.

But the coming together of Spain’s hard-left offers Sánchez’s Socialists the hope of pulling together a minority government that could rule with the backing of several regional parties.

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POLITICS

First pardons granted under Spain’s amnesty for Catalan separatists

A politician and police officer on Tuesday became the first people to benefit from Spain's divisive amnesty law for Catalan separatists involved in a botched 2017 secession bid.

Published: 26 June 2024 07:58 CEST
First pardons granted under Spain's amnesty for Catalan separatists

The amnesty law – approved last month – is expected to affect around 400 people facing trial or already convicted over their roles in the wealthy northeastern region’s failed independence push, which triggered Spain’s worst political crisis in decades.

Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez agreed to grant the amnesty in exchange for the key support of Catalan separatist parties in parliament to secure a new term in office following an inconclusive general election last July.

READ ALSO: Spain’s contested Catalan amnesty bill comes into force

The separatist parties have threatened to withdraw their support for Sánchez’s minority government unless the amnesty is applied.

Catalonia’s High Court said it had decided to “declare the extinction of criminal responsibility” for former Catalan regional interior minister Miquel Buch, as well as to Lluís Escolà, an officer in Catalonia’s regional police force, since the crimes they were convicted of “have been amnestied”.

Buch was sentenced last year to four and a half years in jail for embezzlement and misappropriation for hiring Escolà in 2018 and paying him out of public coffers to act as a bodyguard for the former head of the regional Catalan government, Carles Puigdemont, while he was in self-imposed exile in Belgium.

Escolà was handed a four-year prison sentence for working as Puigdemont’s bodyguard.

Puigdemont fled Spain to avoid arrest shortly after his government led Catalonia’s failed secession push, which involved an independence referendum that was banned by the courts followed by a short-lived declaration of independence.

Spain’s conservative opposition has staged massive street protests against the amnesty law, which judges must decide to apply on a case-by-case basis.

Puigdemont had said he hopes to return to Spain but there is still a warrant for his arrest and a Spanish court continues to investigate him for the alleged crimes of embezzlement and disobedience related to the secession bid.

He also remains under investigation for alleged terrorism over protests in 2019 against the jailing of several referendum leaders that sometimes turned violent.

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