The main obstacle to the restoration of a left-wing government in Spain was removed on Thursday November 9th, paving the way for a possible inauguration of the outgoing prime minister, the socialist Pedro Sanchez, next week. At the price of major concessions to the Catalan separatists, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) signed an agreement with the Junts party to gain the support of its seven MPs. The socialist leader had been negotiating for weeks in Brussels with the former president of the Catalan government, Carles Puigdemont, who fled from Spanish justice after the attempted secession in 2017.
The four-page text contains a particularly controversial amnesty law that covers anyone who was “the subject of decisions or legal proceedings” related to the conduct of the 2014 independence poll and the illegal 2017 referendum. While we wait to know the exact outline of the text, it is likely that in addition to the crimes of misappropriation of public funds, those of public order will also be included. This could therefore also include the violent acts committed in 2019, after independence leaders were sentenced to long prison sentences for “sedition”. “None of those persecuted by the Spanish state will be excluded,” stressed Mr Puigdemont in Brussels, who welcomed a “historic agreement”.
The text envisages the holding of negotiations in which the separatists will demand, in particular, the financial independence of Catalonia, as well as the holding of a referendum on self-determination, which the PSOE continues to oppose. It also includes a “verification mechanism” of agreements carried out abroad by international intermediaries. A long-standing demand from separatists aimed at both advancing their causes and delegitimizing Spanish democracy. In addition, the justification of the investiture agreement takes up the arguments of the separatists, who date the Catalan conflict to 1716, the date of the abolition of regional institutions under the Ancien Régime, and draws up a list of grievances against the state justifying the holding of the illegal referendum from 2017.
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“Spain is not for sale”
To these concessions are added those obtained by the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) on November 2nd, namely the cancellation of 20% of Catalan debt, or 15 billion euros, and the transfer of powers in matters of control of regional railways. “It is necessary to form as quickly as possible a progressive government that will give stability to Spain,” argued PSOE number three Santos Cerdan, who led negotiations with Mr Puigdemont. We are ready to take a new historic step towards a political and negotiated solution to the conflict. »
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