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POLITICS

Spain: Sánchez’s risky bet of a Catalan alliance

Spain's Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has taken a big risk allying with Catalan separatists, opening up a breach in Spanish society and even within his own political family.

Spain: Sánchez's risky bet of a Catalan alliance
A demonstrator holds a photograph of Pedro Sánchez reading "Traitor" during a protest called by far-right and right-wing movements near to the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) headquarters in Madrid on November 10, 2023. Photo: OSCAR DEL POZO/AFP.

In exchange for providing the votes needed to form a new government, Sánchez agreed to Catalan separatist Carles Puigdemont’s demands that hundreds of separatists pursued by Spanish prosecutors for their role in a failed 2017 declaration of independence be amnestied.

Any amnesty talk is controversial in Spain, seen as an assault on the rule of law after the secession attempt set off the worst political crisis in modern Spanish history. 

READ ALSO: Spain’s amnesty dilemma: the ‘end of democracy’ or logical next step?

“We appeal to all outraged citizens, to all Spaniards who will not give up, to all those that want to raise their voices,” Friday said Cuca Gamarra, the number two of the center-right Popular Party (PP), which has called for protest rallies across the country to intensify this weekend. 

Sánchez’ decision is already reflected in opinion polls. According to the latest survey by the CIS institute released Friday, support for the Socialist Party (PSOE) has already dropped 1.3 percentage points in a month, falling to 31.3 percent, while the PP gained 1.7 points to 33.9 percent.

Right and far-right in the streets

The PP and its allies finished first in July’s legislative elections but was not able to form a workable majority in parliament. The PSOE finished second, but after PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo failed to cobble together a majority, the mandate was given to Sanchez and he succeded only at the cost of winning over Puigdemont.

In response, the PP has sought to mobilise public opinion against the amnesty law, organising rallies in all the main cities in the country.

READ ALSO: IN IMAGES: Second night of far-right protests against Spain’s amnesty

The far-right nationalist Vox party has gone even further in its rhetoric, calling for “resistance” against the state. “We have the duty to resist a government and a tyrant that will be sworn in thanks to enemies of Spain,” Santiago Abascal, the party’s head, said Thursday during a demontration in front of PSOE headquarters in Madrid.

The demonstrations, held every evening for a week, have started to degenerate with 24 arrests Thursday, according to police. 

Opposition is rising in the ranks of the judiciary, and not just among conservative judges. In a statement, the main magistrates’ associations, representing all political stripes, said Sánchez’ accords with Puigdemont represent a “rupture in the separation of powers” and an “unacceptable disrespect for the role of the legal system.”

Puigdemont, an unpredictable ally

The amnesty plan is controversial even within the PSOE. Puigdemont, who fled to Belgium after the failed secession to avoid prosecution, “is guilty and is not a victim,” said Emiliano Garcia-Page, Socialist president of the Castilla-La Mancha region. “The judges just applied the law.”

Beyond the current tensions, another challenge for Sánchez will be the reliability of Puigdemont, who for years has strongly opposed Spain’s leftist governments.

“The dance now begins,” said the political scientist Oriol Bartomeus, who says the government’s stability will matter little to Puigdemont, whose priority is appearing more independent and instransigent in the eyes of his Catalan base than his separatist rivals.

“It is a risk but Sánchez has shown he likes risk.”

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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.

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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