Spanish PM offers amnesty to Catalan separatists in deal to remain in power

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has secured a controversial deal to remain in power by offering amnesty to Catalan separatists.

 The accord is aimed at "giving stability to the four-year legislature," Sanchez's Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) official Santos Cerdan told a news conference in Brussels on Thursday, after negotiations with Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont, based in Brussels, Belgium.

To secure another term, Sanchez needs the support of Catalan independence parties. The Spanish prime minister has accepted their demands to offer amnesty to all those being pursued for their role in a failed secession attempt in 2017.

He already has the backing of more moderate Catalan separatist parties and now also secured the support of radical Junts per Catalunya party or JxCat.

However, Sanchez, who has led Spain since 2018, still needs the backing of a small Basque party which he is likely to achieve.

If no government were to be formed by November 27, the parliament would be dissolved and new elections called for January.

Cerdan said the amnesty legislation, which will need the support of several smaller left-wing and regional parties to be passed, will cover all crimes and alleged crimes related to the Catalan separatist movement from 2012 until now.

"Six years have passed [since the secession attempt] and the conflict is still unresolved," Cerdan said. "Our goal is to start a new chapter (...) where the errors of the past are no longer obstacles to overcome." The legislation is likely to end up in Spain’s Constitutional Court for a judicial review.

An amnesty could exculpate as many as 1,400 activists and politicians involved in the attempt to separate Catalonia from Spain.

The agreement has triggered protests in Spain with the main opposition party condemning the deal with separatists who participated in a failed bid for regional independence six years ago as "shameful and humiliating."

The move has been condemned by Sanchez’s conservative opponents accusing him of putting the rule of law in Spain on the line for his own political gain.

The conservative main opposition People’s Party (PP), which won the most votes in the July elections but failed to form a government describes the Catalan separatists as traitors.

Puigdemont who is currently based in Brussels to avoid prosecution gave a separate statement after Cerdan spoke in which he made a passing mention of the amnesty and said nothing about his own legal future.

But he did underscore repeatedly that the agreement was a big victory for his cause.

"We have not accepted that we have committed any crime, we have not had to ask for forgiveness," Puigdemont said.

There is a possibility that the agreement may come under scrutiny from the judiciary, including within the European Union.

EU Commissioner of Justice Didier Reynders has already sent Spain’s government a request for more information on the deal this week.

Former Catalan politician shot 

Meanwhile in the capital Madrid, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, 78, the former head of the PP in Catalonia was shot in the face and hospitalized on Thursday.

“He has been taken conscious to the hospital, whilst National Police agents are investigating the facts,” Spain’s interior ministry said.

Vidal-Quadras is one of the founder members of the far-right party Vox, currently the third largest force in the lower house of Spanish parliament.

Spanish police said they were hunting two men in connection with the shooting who were on a black motorbike, Reuters reported.

Sanchez said that he hoped those responsible for the attack would be arrested.

“I would like to send my solidarity and wishes for a speedy recovery to Alejo Vidal-Quadras,”  Sanchez wrote on X.

Vox Party President Santiago Abascal told reporters that “it’s too early to make conjectures but we don’t rule out any motive in what was an attack” while referring to the incident.

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