Anger at PM’s migration pledge

– Pedro Sanchez’s pledge to transfer regional responsibility for migration to Catalonia following demands from a separatist party accused of “xenophobia” has sparked a backlash, highlighting the fragility of parliamentary alliances keeping Spain’s premier in power.

Last week, during the first key parliamentary vote of the new legislature, Sanchez was forced to seek support from the hardline JxCat to pass three decrees, including a critical measure to help households cope with rising inflation.

In exchange for JxCat’s seven votes, Sanchez agreed to transfer responsibility for migration issues to the regional government of this wealthy northeastern area that borders France.

Spain’s 17 regions enjoy wide powers, notably over education and healthcare, but migration issues are normally handled by the central government.

JxCat has said the deal involved a “comprehensive” handover of powers on migration, but Sanchez said border management and illegal immigration would remain in the state’s hands with the new powers relating to jobs and social integration policies for immigrants.

Even though the details have yet to be laid out in a text that must be approved by parliament, the matter has provoked an angry reaction from the police, Spain’s right-wing opposition and even radical left members of Sanchez’s Socialist-led coalition.

Spain’s largest police union, Jupol, accused Sanchez of using the police, who are responsible for handling issues regarding migration and foreign nationals, “to yield to pressure from the Catalan separatists”.

And right-wing opposition leader and Popular Party head Alberto Nunez Feijoo on Monday lambasted Sanchez for “transferring migration policy” to “a party that Sanchez himself” has branded “xenophobic”.

Feijoo was referencing remarks by Sanchez in February 2021, when he accused certain candidates who were running for JxCat in the regional elections, of using the language of “hatred and xenophobia” akin to that of the far-right.

One of the candidates, who ended up stepping down, had spoken about “cleaning out the Spaniards” from Catalonia.

In May 2018, Sanchez called then Catalan leader Quim Torra the Jean-Marie “Le Pen of Spanish politics”, in reference to the founder of France’s far-right National Front, now the National Rally, for his “racist and xenophobic statements” about the superiority of Catalans over other Spaniards.

More recently, left-wing elements have been angered by JxCat’s leaders for saying Catalonia should have the power to ban immigrants with a criminal record who re-offend. –