RIGHT-WINGERS RALLY IN MADRID
MADRID Thousands of Spaniards joined a right-wing rally in Madrid on Sunday to demand that Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez step down.
Many in the crowd gathered in the capital’s Plaza de Colon, waving Spanish flags. They chanted slogans in favour of the nation’s security forces and for Sanchez to resign.
The conservative opposition Popular Party and the centre-right Citizens party organized the rally, which was also backed by the upstart far-right Vox and other marginal far-right parties. They claim that Sanchez must resign for hold- ing talks with separatists in the northeastern region of Catalonia.
“The time of Sanchez’s government is over,” said Popular Party president Pablo Casado, who asked voters to punish Sanchez’s Socialists in upcoming European, local and regional elections in May.
The political tensions come as a highly sensitive trial at Spain’s Supreme Court starts Tuesday for 12 Catalan separatists who face charges, including rebellion, for their roles in a failed secession attempt in 2017.
Sanchez inherited the Catalan crisis from former prime minister Mariano Rajoy, the then-leader of the Popular Party. Rajoy proved incapable of stopping support for secession from swelling in Catalonia to roughly half of the region’s voters.
Sanchez had said he would be willing to help Catalan lawmakers agree to a new Charter Law, which determines the amount of self-rule the region enjoys. But Sanchez’s government broke off negotiations on Friday, when Vice-president Carmen Calvo said the separatists wouldn’t budge from their demand for an independence referendum.