Spanish amnesty deal kept
Despite passage, Catalan’s move snags national budget
BARCELONA, Spain — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has kept his part of a bargain struck last year with Catalonia’s separatists to keep him in power by pushing through a divisive amnesty bill. The legislation aims to clear hundreds of secession supporters for their roles in an illegal breakaway bid attempted six years ago.
The amnesty became a political necessity for the Socialist leader after an inconclusive national election last July left two Catalan separatist parties playing kingmaker. Their price for backing a new minority government led by Sánchez was nothing less than an amnesty for their supporters and leaders still in legal trouble, among other concessions.
The passing of the amnesty bill by Spain’s Parliament in the capital of Madrid by a vote of 178-172 on Thursday was supposed to provide a boost to Sánchez’s government, which hoped the separatists would afterward be more inclined to support a new national budget.
But those plans were dashed less than 24 hours earlier when Catalonia’s regional leader called a snap election after failing to pass a regional budget by one vote. That created a domino effect whereby Sánchez’s treasury ministry said that it was scrapping any attempt to pass a budget for this year and would work on having it ready for 2025.
The prospect of having to negotiate a budget with the two highly demanding separatist parties while they were in campaign mode was too daunting for the central government.
Sánchez’s government can carry the current national budget over into next year.
Spain faces an election-packed spring with a regional election in the Basque Country in April and European elections in June.
Members of Sánchez’s government professed confidence that it could muddle along. “We have three-and-a-half years of the term remaining,” Justice Minister Félix Bolaños said.
Legal experts are divided over the constitutionality of the amnesty for the Catalan separatists. Its critics say that it violates the principle of equality among Spaniards by favoring those of one region.
The government says the amnesty could help hundreds of people, while the pro-independence Catalan organization Omnium Cultural says it should benefit some 4,400 people, mostly minor officials and ordinary citizens who either helped to organize the referendum or participated in protests.
Sánchez, who pardoned nine jailed separatist leaders in 2021, promoted the amnesty as a way to definitively move past the chaotic 2017 independence referendum attempt by the then-leaders of Catalonia, a northeastern region centered around Barcelona where many speak the local Catalan language as well as Spanish.
However, the bill has also met opposition from Spaniards who believe that the people who provoked one of the European nation’s biggest political crises should face charges including embezzlement and promoting public disorder. The conservative opposition accuses Sánchez of selling out the rule of law in exchange for another term in the Moncloa Palace and has organized major street protests during recent months.
Socialist party parliamentary spokesperson Patxi López defended the bill Thursday as a move to seek a page-turning “reconciliation” with Catalonia.
The opposition Popular Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo hit back saying that “this is not reconciliation but submission.”
The bill still faces a number of procedural steps before becoming law. The Senate, which has a conservative majority, is expected to reject it, which would mean that Parliament’s lower house will have to vote for it a second time to push it through.
The application of the amnesty will be decided by the courts on a case-by-case basis.