Ousted party accuses Spain’s new leader of ‘shady deals’

THE Spanish Popular Party yesterday warned that it would use all of its political weight to prevent the new government making concessions to Catalan separatists, accusing the new prime minister of agreeing “shady pacts” to secure power.

Rafael Hernando, the PP’S spokesman in the Spanish congress, told the COPE radio station that the party would “continue working, now from the opposition, to prevent Pedro Sánchez making concessions to the separatists”.

Mr Sánchez’s centre-left PSOE won Friday’s no-confidence motion with the support of the hard-left Podemos party, Catalan pro-independence parties and Basque nationalists – generating speculation over what Mr Hernando claimed were “shady backroom deals” that had yet to be revealed. The PP would make full use of its absolute majority in the Spanish senate to block concessions to the separatists, officials stressed.

Both the PSOE and the Catalan separatist leadership have denied any secret agreements. Mr Sánchez has offered political dialogue – welcomed by Quim Torra, the new Catalan leader – but has also insisted on the inviolability of the constitution, which underlines the “indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation”.

Nevertheless, Catalan leaders have made clear their demands. Yesterday, Ernest Maragall, the new Catalan secretary for external affairs, told local radio that the “first measure” should be “the freedom of the political prisoners and the return of those in exile”.

On Wednesday, the Spanish supreme court will study appeals from 14 Catalan politicians charged with rebellion, providing an opportunity for state prosecutors to soften their stance. But ultimately, the cases are in the hands of Judge Pablo Llarena.

Mr Sánchez’s policy on Catalonia has shifted back and forth over the years, but he has eyed a wholesale reform of the relationship between the state and Spain’s 17 autonomous communities.

The PSOE has alluded to revisiting the thorny issue of Catalonia’s Statute of Autonomy, the 2010 gutting of which by Spain’s Constitutional Court – on petition from the PP – is widely regarded as the catalyst for the Catalan independence drive.