The Spanish government’s negotiating team and its partners have finalized the draft amnesty law that will pave the way for incumbent Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to secure a new term in office after inconclusive elections in July.
Under the agreement with the Catalan separatist party Junts, its leader Carles Puigdemont – who fled to Belgium after the failed 2017 secession attempt – as well as many others involved in the illegal secession attempt will benefit from the amnesty. In return, Junts’ seven MPs in the Spanish Parliament will vote in favor of Sánchez’s investiture vote, which is expected to take place this week.
The Socialists submitted the amnesty bill to Congress at 6 p.m. on Monday and plan to fast-track it through Parliament rather than through the normal legislative initiative process. The original idea was to submit the application on November 3, but the plan was delayed by another ten days due to difficulties in completing negotiations with Junts.
The government insists that the wording of the bill is sound, even though the Spanish constitution does not provide for the possibility of an amnesty as such. According to the Spanish executive, there have been up to 52 amnesties in Europe since the Second World War, and several of them have been granted in countries that, like Spain, do not provide for this option in their own constitutions, namely Germany and Belgium.
The future law includes the abolition of “criminal, administrative and accounting responsibility” of all persons who committed crimes in connection with the separatist trial in Catalonia for a decade, from January 1, 2012 to November 13, 2023. It contains no reference to examining hypothetical cases of lawfare (legal prosecution for political reasons), a term that was included in the political agreement (which is not legally binding) that the PSOE reached with Junts last week and which provoked significant criticism.
The law benefits people who have participated in the independence process at all levels, from the highest to the lowest. This means Carles Puigdemont can return to Spain without risking prosecution. The amnesty also extends to the more than 300 school principals accused of criminal offenses for opening their schools to the illegal referendum of October 1, 2017, as well as the 73 police officers facing trial for violently suppressing the vote.
According to the provisions of the bill, judges must apply the amnesty within a maximum of two months after the law is passed by Parliament. The document, which will be submitted to Congress on Monday, is supported by Sánchez’s own Socialist Party (PSOE), the left-wing alliance Sumar and a number of smaller regional groups: Catalonia’s separatist parties Junts and Catalan Republican Left (ERC). , the moderate Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), the left-wing Basque party Bildu and the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG).
Sánchez is confirmed
Spain’s incumbent Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez with Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other leaders at the meeting of the Party of European Socialists on November 11, 2023 in Málaga. JON NAZCA (Portal)
Now that the bill has been submitted in accordance with the agreement, the investiture mechanism will be put into motion and Sánchez will, in principle, undergo a two-day parliamentary session, culminating in a vote in which he expects to secure the 176 seats he must form a government . That session is expected to take place on Wednesday and Thursday, meaning Sánchez would officially become Spain’s new prime minister on Thursday, November 16, just 11 days before the constitutional deadline for dissolving the Chamber of Deputies and calling a new election.
More information
The Governing Body of Congress has scheduled a meeting for Tuesday at which it could order investiture debate to begin on Wednesday after going through a procedural step that requires the board to “qualify” the bill as legal before it goes to trial. It is theoretically possible, although considered unlikely, for the bill to fail due to a negative report from the House of Commons legal department. This actually happened in 2021 with a previous amnesty bill submitted by separatist parties.
The Socialists insist that the bill was completely different from this one, since it was clearly unconstitutional since it called into question the actions of the judicial system, which, as PSOE sources assure, is not the case with the current bill we are talking about We have thought long and hard about legal specialists ensuring that Spanish constitutional laws are adhered to. It is foreseeable that the main opposition party, PP, will try to prevent the board from approving the bill, but the PSOE has control of this body and is confident that the process will move forward as planned.
Despite the widespread social rejection of the agreement, which has sparked numerous protests across Spain – the latest and largest took place last Sunday – the government believes that once the text of the bill becomes public, and especially after Sánchez is back in office Once he has been confirmed in office, the tide of public opinion will turn in his favor. For now, the negotiations have met with rejection not only from conservative circles, but also from some progressives, who accuse the PSOE of accepting the separatists’ narrative about the drive for independence and adopting it as their own.
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive more English language news from EL PAÍS USA Edition