The Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) reached an agreement on Thursday with the independents Together for Catalonia (JxCat) to facilitate a new left-wing government in Spain, sources from the two formations cited by Spanish media said.
The agreement reached by the PSOE, led by Pedro Sánchez, and the party of the former president of the regional government of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, is expected to be publicly announced and formalized today. according to the same sources.
The deal includes amnesty for those involved in Catalonia’s attempt at self-determination, which culminated in a unilateral declaration of independence in 2017, led by Puigdemont, who has lived in Belgium since that year to escape Spanish justice.
Puigdemont, who negotiated this agreement with the PSOE, is one of the potential beneficiaries of the amnesty.
Following the Spanish elections on 23 July, the PSOE negotiated agreements with Catalan, Basque and Galician nationalist and independence parties to secure Sánchez’s reappointment as Prime Minister in Parliament.
After the agreement with JxCat announced today, all that remains is to confirm the support of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV, in its Spanish acronym) for Sánchez’s reappointment.
The negotiations with Puigdemont’s party were considered the most difficult of the PSOE, as JxCat voted against Sánchez’s inauguration during the previous parliamentary term, unlike the other formations, which voted in favor or abstained.
Amnesty is the demand of the Catalan parties to make a new left-wing government in Spain viable. This demand was also agreed last week with the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC).
If a new prime minister is not appointed by parliament by November 27, Spain will have to repeat the elections.
Source: DN
