Thousands protest in Madrid over offer of talks with Catalans
● Opposition calls on Prime Minister to resign and urges early election
of thousands of people gathered in Madrid yesterday to demand socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez step down over the Spanish Government’s plan to ease tensions in Catalonia.
The centre-right Popular Party (PP) and Ciudadanos (Citizens) organised the rally, which was also backed by the far-right Vox party and other marginal parties.
Many in the crowd, who gathered in the capital’s Plaza de Colon and nearby streets, waved Spanish flags and chanted slogans such as “Long live Spain”, “For a united Spain” and “Elections now”.
Police estimate 45,000 people joined the demonstration.
The Right regards the offer of round-table talks and the appointment of a special raprow porteur for separatists as a betrayal and surrender.
Opposition parties also want the country’s elections, scheduled for 2020, to be brought forward.
However, the government announced on Friday that separatists have rejected the offer.
The ruling Socialists also oppose Catalan independence.
“The time of Mr Sanchez’s government is over,” said PP president Pablo Casado, who asked voters to punish Mr Sanchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party in the European, local and regional elections in May.
In a speech at the rally, Mr Casado criticised Mr Sanchez’s policies as “Socialist surrender” and “deals under the table”.
Speaking at a local election campaign meeting yesterday, Mr Sanchez said the Socialist Party had always supported dialogue and was now in the position of trying to resolve a crisis made worse by the PP when it was in power.
The political tensions come as a sensitive trial at Spain’s Supreme Court starts tomortens
for 12 Catalan separatists who face charges, including rebellion, for their roles in a failed secession attempt in 2017.
They could face 25 years in jail.
Mr Sanchez inherited the Catalan crisis from former prime minister Mariano Rajoy, the then-leader of the PP.
Mr Rajoy could not stop support for secession from swelling in Catalonia to roughly half of the region’s voters.
Mr Sanchez came to power
in June promising to ease tensions between central authorities in Madrid and Catalan leaders in Barcelona.
He has twice met Catalan chief Quim Torra and members of both governments had several more encounters.
Mr Sanchez had said he would be willing to help Catalan politicians agree to a new charter law, which determines the amount of self-rule the region enjoys.
But Mr Sanchez’s government broke off negotiations when vice president Carmen Calvo said the separatists would not budge from their demand for an independence referendum.
Mr Sanchez is trying to gather support to pass a national budget and will need votes from the Catalan separatists to acjieve that.
Even though Mr Sanchez has said he wants to see out the legislative term to 2020, a failure to win a budget vote would greatly increase the pressure on him to call an early election.
Fernando Vallespin, a political scientist at the Autonomous University of Madrid, said: “The government made a miscalculation.
“It thought it could convince people that this rapporteur figure was harmless but it is clear that it’s an unacceptable concession that crosses a red line for Sanchez’s critics.”
Catalan nationalists regained power in May after seven months of direct rule by Madrid.
Mr Sanchez took office the following month, making negotiations with the proindependence movement his priority.