The amnesty law for Catalan independentists reaches the plenary session of the Spanish Parliament this Tuesday, a month after the agreements that made the new government of socialist Pedro Sánchez viable.
The amnesty was agreed between the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) and two Catalan independence groups, Esquerra Republicana de Cataluña (ERC, currently in the regional executive) and Together for Catalonia (JxCat, of former regional president Carles Puigdemont).
In exchange for the viability of a new Sánchez Government, after the legislative elections of July 23, ERC and JxCat requested amnesty for people prosecuted or already prosecuted for their involvement in the self-determination movement in Catalonia between 2012 and 2023, which had culminated in a unilateral declaration of independence in 2017.
The amnesty has been opposed on the streets and by right-wing parties and various sectors, including associations of judges and prosecutors, who say the rule of law and the principle of separation of powers are at stake.
The European Commission also asked Spain for information on the future law.
In Parliament, the amnesty is initially guaranteed approval by an absolute majority of 178 of the 350 deputies from seven parties that already made Sánchez’s re-election as prime minister possible on November 16.
In addition to the two Catalan parties, the PSOE and Somar (which are in the government coalition), the Basque Nationalist Party and EH Bildu and the Galician Nationalist Bloc will vote in favor.
Sánchez denied the possibility of this amnesty until the July 23 elections, but has said that the result of the legislative elections led the socialists “to make a virtue of necessity.”
The leader of the PSOE has repeated that agreements with the Catalan parties and other nationalist and independence forces in the Basque Country and Galicia were the only way to avoid an extreme right-wing government in Spain.
The socialist also says that the results of the elections showed that the majority of voters support the process of dejudicialization, forgiveness and dialogue that began with Catalonia since he became President of the Government in 2018.
In the last legislature, Sánchez already granted pardons to imprisoned Catalan independentists, in a decision that, according to polls at the time, was contested by the majority of Spaniards.
This Tuesday is no longer the case and “not even the opposition manages to criticize the pardons,” Sánchez said last Tuesday.
The leader of the PSOE repeatedly emphasizes that the situation in Catalonia is now different from that of 2018, when there was violence in the streets and the pro-independence forces systematically won the elections, with the socialists now having the most votes.
“It is not a question of faith. It could be before the pardons,” Sánchez said in relation to the amnesty.
For the right-wing and extreme-right parties, the law that will be debated this Tuesday in Parliament is also an “electoral fraud” and “a coup d’état”, because the amnesty was not in the PSOE’s electoral program and Sánchez even denied its possibility during the campaign.
For this reason, the Popular Party (PP, right) and Vox (extreme right) ask for a repeat of the elections, so that “Spanish people can vote with all the information.”
Source: TSF
