MADRID — The debate on the controversial amnesty for Catalan independentists promoted by the socialist government Pedro Sanchez took an unexpected turn with the admission of the right-wing opposition leader that he is not opposed to a pardon with conditions.
The controversy broke out at a delicate moment for Alberto Núñez Feijóohead of the conservative Popular Party ( PP), ahead of Sunday’s regional elections in Galicia, a region where he governed for 13 years and where a defeat for his party would be seen as a serious personal setback.
The bill to amnesty hundreds of pro-independence supporters prosecuted for their involvement in the attempted secession of Catalonia in 2017, one of the worst crises in contemporary Spain, has been at the center of the political debate since the legislative elections last July.
Feijóo won the elections, but he did not obtain the necessary support in Parliament to be elected president, which the socialist Pedro Sánchez did achieve, in exchange for the promise of granting an amnesty to the separatists. Thanks to the support of numerous regional parties, including Together for Catalonia (Junts per Catalunya) of the independence movement Carles Puigdemont, Sánchez remains in office.
In exchange for the indispensable vote in favor of its seven deputies, Puigdemont’s party, installed in Belgium to evade Spanish justice, demanded the amnesty law.
Surprise
Since then, Feijóo does not go a day without criticizing Sánchez’s “humiliation” before the independence supporters for the amnesty law, which he considers unconstitutional and against which he has called on his followers to demonstrate on several occasions.
Feijóo did not hide his satisfaction when at the end of January the Congress of Deputies rejected the amnesty law in first reading, paradoxically thanks to the votes against Junts, who considered that the text did not protect the separatists against all the crimes that were committed. They could be charged.
Sánchez’s socialists continue negotiating with Junts to modify the project and put it to a vote again in Congress in the coming days.
Hence the surprise was total when on Sunday several Spanish media published words from a senior PP leader, who was later confirmed to be Feijóo, who defended what they called a “reconciliation plan” for Catalonia and a pardon for Puigdemont if He undertook to “respect” the rule of law.
He also acknowledged having studied for “24 hours” the amnesty after the legislative elections in exchange for possible support from Junts to make him president, although he finally ruled it out.
“Lies”
These words have been “a mistake” because they do “damage” to the PP after its frontal campaign against the amnesty and Sánchez’s pacts with the Catalan independentists, José Ignacio Torreblanca, an analyst at the European ideas cabinet, estimated on RNE public radio. ECFR.
Campaigning in Galicia, Feijóo has tried in recent days to minimize the controversy, “I do not accept pardons nor will I accept them” and the PP will continue fighting “against an illegal amnesty,” he stated at a rally in Pontevedra.
The government of Pedro Sánchez has taken the opportunity to attack Feijóo, stating that he now defends what he criticized for months.
“The balance of these first hundred days of the Popular Party” as an opposition “could not be more devastating: lies, opacity, hypocrisy,” government spokesperson Pilar Alegría launched on Tuesday.
What is played
After this setback, Feijóo has a lot at stake this Sunday in the regional elections of Galicia, a fiefdom of the PP, where according to surveys the right and the left are quite evenly matched.
If the PP loses the government of the region, “a very serious question would open within the party regarding (the) leadership” of Feijóo, said José Ignacio Torreblanca.
Source: With information from AFP
