Spain’s conservative People’s party (PP) has urged the EU to weigh in on the controversial Catalan amnesty law tabled by the ruling socialists, claiming it demands the kind of action the bloc has previously taken when concerns over the rule of law have arisen in Poland, Hungary and Romania.
The Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE), which was narrowly beaten by the PP in July’s inconclusive general election, agreed to the amnesty after the two main Catalan pro-independence parties made it a condition for supporting the formation of a new, socialist-led government with the support of a majority in parliament.
The draft amnesty law would apply to hundreds of people involved in the unlawful push for Catalan independence between 2012 and last year. They include Carles Puigdemont, the former Catalan regional president who fled Spain to avoid arrest after masterminding the botched effort to secede in 2017.
Rightwing Spanish parties have accused Pedro Sánchez, the PSOE leader and caretaker prime minister, of debasing democracy and using the amnesty as a cynical ploy to remain in power. About 70% of Spanish voters are opposed, and huge demonstrations against the move were held across Spain on Sunday.
The PP stepped up its attack on the proposed law as Spain’s congress prepared for the investiture debate that is almost certain to result in Sánchez winning a new term in office on Thursday.
The PP’s leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, said Spain was facing “an unprecedented situation” and called on the EU to step in.
“Tomorrow’s investiture is a done deal … and the amnesty is a direct payment for the votes needed for the [PSOE] to form a government,” Feijóo told reporters in Madrid on Tuesday morning. “And who pays for that? The Spanish people, but also, in my opinion, Europe, because the deterioration of a democracy like Spain’s … will obviously have consequences for European institutions.”
He noted that the EU had intervened in the past when democratic norms and the rule of law had come under scrutiny in other member states. “It’s done so in Poland, in Romania and in Hungary, and we think our case isn’t radically different to those of those countries,” he said.
Esteban González Pons, a PP MEP who also serves as the party’s institutional vice-secretary, drew parallels with the EU’s intervention in Romania four years ago.
“The most similar case was in Romania in 2019 when a socialist government tried to bring in an amnesty law that would grant an amnesty to socialist politicians who had been convicted of corruption and other things,” he said. “When that happened, [the then European Commission president] Jean-Claude Juncker visited Bucharest and warned Romania that pressing on with the law could affect its position in the EU, and Romania agreed to a referendum on the issue, which it lost by 80% of the vote.”
He also took the extreme step of likening the amnesty to the kind of legislation introduced during the fascist Franco dictatorship that lasted for almost four decades.
The law “declares a decade of impunity in Catalonia because all the crimes committed in Catalonia over the course of a decade will be covered by the amnesty, from terrorism to political corruption,” he said. “As such, anything that happens in other parts of Spain is a crime but anything can be forgiven in Catalonia. If you’ll allow me to say so, this is the kind of law we saw during Francoism”.”
The EU justice commissioner, Didier Reynders, has already written to the acting Spanish government asking for more details of the proposed law, saying the issue had raised serious concerns and had become “a matter of considerable importance in the public debate”.
In a polite but blunt reply last week, the acting government pointed out that the Spanish constitution did not allow caretaker administrations to put legislation before parliament. Any such legislation, it said, would be proposed by political parties. It did, however, offer to provide more details to the commission once the amnesty bill had been tabled.
Sánchez – who began negotiations to form a new government after Feijóo proved unable to do so, even with the support of the far-right Vox party and other smaller groupings – has claimed the amnesty is needed to heal the wounds of the past and guarantee peaceful coexistence in Spain.
He has also urged the PP to show “good sense” and cease trying to stir things up.
“I ask them to respect the result at the ballot box and the legitimacy of the government we will soon form,” Sánchez said on Saturday. “I ask them to be brave and to say no to the bear hug of the far right, and to abandon the reactionary path that they’re currently following towards the abyss. We will govern for all Spaniards, for four more years of social progress and coexistence.”
