(Madrid) The Catalan separatists from Carles Puigdemont’s party assured on Friday that they were still “far” from an agreement with the outgoing Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who absolutely needs the votes of their deputies in Parliament to stay in power.
“Today we are still far, very far from this commitment” with the socialists, declared the spokesperson for Junts per Catalunya (JxCat), Míriam Nogueras, after a highly anticipated meeting with Mr. Sánchez at the Congress of Deputies .
This meeting was the culmination of a series of meetings organized this week by Mr. Sánchez with parties likely to support his inauguration, including several pro-independence parties.
Before his interview with JxCat, Mr. Sánchez spoke early in the morning with officials from Bildu, a Basque independence group considered to be the heir to the political showcase of the armed organization ETA (now dissolved).
Bildu has already made it known that it would vote for Mr. Sánchez in order to block the right, but the party of Carles Puigdemont, at the origin of an abortive attempt at secession of Catalonia in 2017, intends to negotiate hard for its support for Mr. Sánchez.
The main demand of JxCat and the other Catalan independence party, Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC, more moderate) concerns the granting of an amnesty to all people prosecuted or convicted for this attempted secession. Mr. Puigdemont himself fled to Belgium in 2017 to escape Spanish justice and is still the subject of an arrest warrant.
PHOTO JOHN THYS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Carles Puigdemont himself fled to Belgium in 2017 to escape Spanish justice and is still the subject of an arrest warrant.
In a statement published after the meeting, Mr. Sánchez’s Socialist Party simply assured that “the meetings [s’intensifieraient] next week “.
The current deadlock stems from the fact that neither the Socialists nor the Popular Party (right) of Alberto Núñez Feijóo obtained an absolute majority of 176 seats out of 350 in the Congress of Deputies during the early elections of July 23.
Coming in first, Mr. Feijóo tried to be invested at the end of September, but failed.
King Felipe VI then charged Mr. Sánchez, who has been managing day-to-day affairs since the election, with trying to obtain the nomination. He has until November 27, failing which new elections will take place in January.
To achieve this, he must notably obtain the vote of the seven deputies of JxCat, who have raised the stakes in recent weeks.
In addition to amnesty, a possibility that the right rejects, Mr. Puigdemont and ERC are also calling for the opening of negotiations for the holding of a new referendum on self-determination, a demand considered by the socialists as a red line.
The fact that he agreed to negotiate with the Catalan separatists to be able to remain prime minister caused Mr. Sánchez to be booed again by part of the audience, Thursday in Madrid, during the ceremonies marking the national holiday.