Once again Pedro Sanchez won his bet, perhaps the riskiest of all and also the most controversial. On Thursday November 16, the Socialist was re-elected President of the Spanish Government with the votes of 179 deputies (socialists, radical left, Catalan separatists, nationalists and Basque separatists, etc.) against 171 (the conservatives of the Popular Party) (party, PP and the party elected by the far-right party Vox), the majority was 176. While he was considered a loser before the parliamentary elections of July 23, he confirmed his opposition at the head of an executive uniting the Socialists and the radical left , which he has led since 2018.
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Mr. Sanchez won Thursday’s vote at the expense of agreements negotiated over three months and in secret with the Catalan pro-independence parties, whose MPs were crucial to his inauguration. A clause in these agreements deeply divides the electorate, including the socialists. This is an amnesty, an indispensable condition set by the Junts independence party so that it can achieve an absolute majority thanks to the vote of its seven deputies.
For some, Mr. Sanchez showed political courage by accepting this amnesty, the principle of which he rejected before the elections. The bill would eradicate crimes committed between 2012 and 2023 in connection with the organization of the 2014 and 2017 referendums by Catalan independence activists. His vote would allow Carles Puigdemont, the former president of the Catalan regional government, to return to Spain without being jailed. He was in charge during the attempted secession in Barcelona in October 2017, was charged by the Spanish justice system with disobedience and embezzlement of public funds and fled to Belgium to escape. He himself negotiated the terms of the agreement between his Junts party and the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) in Brussels.
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For others, 51-year-old Pedro Sanchez has shown that he is willing to trade Spaniards’ equality before the law, even the unity of the kingdom, for his reappointment to power. Beyond the opposition, several associations of judges and civil servants have expressed fears of an attack on the separation of powers. The amnesty is also criticized by left-wing figures such as writer Javier Cercas and former Socialist governor Felipe Gonzalez, and is opposed by 40% of Socialist voters, according to polls.
“Healing the Divide”
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