The current Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, took an important step forward in the formation of his new government. His socialist PSOE party agreed with Catalonia’s separatist Left Republicans (ERC) on an amnesty law and other concessions from the central government in Madrid. In return, the ERC, which governs Catalonia, wants to vote in parliament for Sánchez’s re-election.
Hans-Christian Roßler
Political correspondent for the Iberian Peninsula and Maghreb based in Madrid; previously correspondent in Israel.
However, the votes of the seven deputies from the separatist Junts party of former regional president Carles Puigdemont are still needed to obtain an absolute majority. However, no approval came from Brussels, where Puigdemont fled in 2017, as of Friday afternoon. The Junts leadership negotiated there for hours without result on Thursday. Apparently, Junts wanted to ensure that even more separatists benefited from the amnesty, which could also pave the way for Puigdemont’s return to Spain.
Only with the support of Catalan separatists and Basque and Galician nationalists will the socialist Sánchez have the opportunity for another mandate. He has already agreed to a minority government with the left-wing Sumar alliance. But time after July’s early legislative elections is running out. If there is no new government by November 27th, parliament will be automatically dissolved and other elections will take place on January 14th. In Sánchez’s PSOE party there was recently great confidence that a majority in parliament would be secured next week. To achieve this, according to the will of the Catalan separatists, the amnesty law must first have been introduced through parliament.
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So far it has been announced that it will apply to thousands of Catalan separatists between 2013 and November 2023, as well as Spanish security forces who were deployed during the illegal independence referendum on October 1, 2017. Furthermore, activists who are being prosecuted for blocking roads and participating in riots. The PSOE also agreed with the ERC that regional rail traffic in Catalonia should no longer be the responsibility of the national Ministry of Transport, but rather the regional government in Barcelona.
Furthermore, the central government wants to cancel Catalonia’s debts worth 15 billion euros. Other regional governments resist this preference for Catalonia. The conservative PP Popular Party announced that it would end the amnesty law. “It has no legal basis” and is a “democratic aberration”, said PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Former PP Prime Minister José María Aznar called on Spaniards to rise up against this threat to the constitution and democracy.