Spain’s prime minister offers an amnesty to Catalan separatists

“GUILTY OF A coup d’état,” said the leader of the hard-right Vox party. “The beginning of the end of democracy”, according to a group of conservative judges. “Putting the constitution at the service of separatists and former terrorists”, said José María Aznar, a conservative former prime minister. Critics of Pedro Sánchez do not risk understatement when they speak of his deal to pardon thousands involved in Catalonia’s illegal independence referendum in 2017, unveiled on November 9th after weeks of tortuous negotiations.

Elections held on July 23rd left neither the centre-right nor centre-left with a majority, even with their respective preferred smaller coalition partners. So Mr Sánchez, the Socialist leader and incumbent prime minister, negotiated to win the support of five regional separatist parties, including two Catalan ones. The toughest one to bring on board was Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia), whose leader, Carles Puigdemont, organised the referendum in 2017, fled to Belgium and is still wanted by the Spanish authorities. Without an amnesty he would risk trial and imprisonment for “rebellion” should he return to Spain.

What was announced on the morning of November 9th is a political agreement between Mr Sánchez’s Socialist Party and Junts; the text of the proposed amnesty has not yet been made public. But it will cover not only the ringleaders of the referendum but many ordinary people who took part in the process. In return, Junts deputies will agree to re-install Mr Sánchez as prime minister. A vote to do that is due by November 27th.

On many of the issues, the parties declare they will continue to disagree. Junts still asserts the validity of its referendum and the declaration of independence that followed it. The Socialist Party “denies any legality or validity of the referendum and the declaration, and maintains its rejection of any unilateral action”.

Mr Puigdemont’s initial wishlist was longer. Besides the end of the “judicialisation of the conflict” (ie, the past and future criminal cases against separatists), on which point he seems to have won, he demanded an international mediator to oversee promises made and kept. The government in Madrid rejects the idea that someone should arbitrate between the two sides as though they have equal status. The political agreement mentions only a vague “mechanism” rather than a mediator.

Another of the demands made by Mr Puigdemont in his list of them in September was a recognition only of international treaties as the legal framework for resolving the conflict. That is because the Spanish constitution flatly insists on the inviolability of Spain’s territorial integrity. But declaring the constitution to be of no importance is something no Spanish prime minister could ever do, and there is no mention of this demand of Mr Puigdemont’s in the agreement.

The fury of the right was predictable. For days before the agreement, protests brought hundreds to the doors of the local offices of the Socialist Party. In Madrid some tried to breach the fence and were dispersed by police using rubber bullets and tear-gas. (On November 9th, a former leader of the conservative People’s Party [PP] in Catalonia, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, was shot in the face in Madrid in what seems like a professional attempted murder, though no motive is yet known. He was, however, a critic of the amnesty.)

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the PP, said, “Spain has lost, the independentists have won and the PSOE [the Socialist Party] is disappearing.” Isabel Díaz Ayuso, his party-mate and the populist conservative leader of the Madrid region, spoke of an emerging “dictatorship through the back door”. Santiago Abascal, the leader of Vox, said that the government had “gone from illegitimate to illegal”.

But their fury is so intense because the continuation in power of Mr Sánchez—who finished behind the PP in July’s elections—now seems assured. Whether the Catalonia conflict really is stabilised remains to be seen. The agreement seeks to assure “stability” during the term of the newly elected parliament, so long as promises are kept. (This means that Junts will agree to approve budgets and other must-pass legislation, so long as Mr Sánchez keeps his side of the bargain.) Hard-core separatist activists insist that their fight continues unabated—and may even mount a new separatist party to challenge the established ones if they seem to become complacent. But the movement seems tired. Many Catalans on both sides of the conflict are eager to talk about anything else for a while.

In any event, peace between centre and Catalonia comes at the cost of aggravating the perennial hatred between left and right in Spain. Mr Sánchez is not the amoral, power-hungry grifter his conservative opponents describe. But the amnesty he now offers—and once opposed—can easily be portrayed as a grubby deal for his personal benefit. Even many Socialists are uncomfortable with it. And so, despite any progress in Catalonia, a calm and reasonable political atmosphere in Madrid seems as far away as ever. And Mr Sánchez’s new minority government will hang by the slenderest of threads. ■