The Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and the independentists Together for Catalonia (JxCat) signed an agreement this Thursday to facilitate a new left-wing government in Spain, socialist leader Santos Cerdán confirmed at a press conference.
The agreement reached by the PSOE, led by Pedro Sánchez, and the party of the former president of the Generalitat of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont, was signed this morning in Brussels, where the Catalan independence movement lives and is an MEP.
The agreement includes an 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 July 23, the PSOE negotiated agreements with the Catalan, Basque and Galician nationalist and independence parties to ensure Sánchez’s re-election as prime minister in parliament.
After the agreement announced today with JxCat, all that remains is to confirm support for Sánchez’s re-election, from the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV).
The negotiations with Puigdemont’s party were considered the most difficult for the PSOE, since JxCat voted against Sánchez’s investiture in the previous legislature, unlike the rest of the parties, which voted in favor or abstained.
The amnesty is the demand of the Catalan parties to make a new left-wing government viable in Spain and had also been agreed, last week, with the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC).
If there is no new prime minister appointed by parliament before November 27, Spain will have to repeat the elections.
Source: TSF
