Thousands of people are expected to gather in Madrid on Sunday to protest against a possible amnesty for those who took part in the failed push for Catalan independence six years ago that plunged Spain into its worst political crisis in decades.
The issue of an amnesty was raised after July’s inconclusive general election, in which Spain’s ruling Socialist party (PSOE) was narrowly defeated by the conservative People’s party (PP).
Despite the PP’s victory, the PSOE, led by the acting prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has the best chance of forming a new government. But to do so, Sánchez will have to rely on the support of Junts, the hardline Catalan independence party led by the former Catalan regional president Carles Puigdemont, who fled Spain six years ago to avoid arrest over his role in masterminding the unilateral and unlawful attempt for independence.
Puigdemont, who lives in self-exile in Brussels, has said his party will back Sánchez only if the caretaker prime minister grants an amnesty to all those involved in the attempt at secession.
Sánchez, who two years ago pardoned nine Catalan independence leaders convicted over the secessionist push, has refused to rule anything out. At the beginning of the month, one of his acting deputy prime ministers, the Sumar leader, Yolanda Díaz, travelled to Belgium to meet Puigdemont to discuss possible options for a new government.
The PP leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, will seek MPs’ backing next week to form a new government, but his effort is likely to fail as he lacks the necessary support in congress. Sánchez, who has been in office for five years, will then propose himself as a candidate for prime minister – assuming he can win the backing of Puigdemont and Junts.
Speaking on Wednesday, the acting prime minister carefully avoided any mention of an amnesty.
“If I’m chosen as a candidate, I will talk – completely frankly and transparently – about the main lines of a hypothetical administration led by the Socialist party,” he said.
“But what I can tell you now is that it will be coherent with what we’ve already done. I’ve seen some of the things that have been said – not just by the opposition, but also in the conservative media – and we’ve had five years of apocalyptic prophecies that have never come to pass.”
Sánchez added that his approach to the Catalan question – which has been markedly more conciliatory than that of his PP predecessor, Mariano Rajoy – had paid off and had managed to bring a “traumatised” Spain back together.
But the PP has accused Sánchez of hypocrisy and naked opportunism, pointing out that the Socialist leader had previously opposed an amnesty and had vowed that those responsible for the attempt to break from Spain would face justice.
“We’re probably at a turning point in our country’s democratic history,” Feijóo said on Thursday.
“Yesterday, for the first time, we saw a Spanish prime minister speaking openly about the possibility of an amnesty for all those who committed crimes against Spanish democracy. This is the same MP who promised that all the fugitives would face justice … It’s obvious that what we’re seeing is an electoral fraud, an attack on Spanish democracy, and an attack on the separation of powers enshrined in the constitution.”
The PP is hoping to seize on public anger over the prospect of an amnesty and has called a big demonstration in the capital on Sunday “in defence of the equality of all Spaniards”. Feijóo will be joined at the protest by two of his predecessors – Rajoy, who was prime minister at the time of the Catalan crisis, and José María Aznar, who governed Spain between 1996 and 2004.
The conservatives are hoping to use the event to regain the momentum they have lost since the election, and to put pressure on Sánchez on the eve of Feijóo’s probably doomed investiture attempt.
If Sánchez cannot win the necessary support to regain office, Spain will head to the polls again early next year for its sixth general election in nine years.
