the amnesty law promised to Catalan separatists is examined by the deputies

It is a highly sensitive bill, which arrived in the Spanish Parliament on Tuesday. He plans to erase the convictions that hit independence activists in Catalonia. And the debates are extremely heated.

Is the socialist Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, healing Spain’s wounds or, on the contrary, reviving them? This is the whole question with this amnesty law examined on Tuesday January 23 in committee in Parliament. Pedro Sanchez’s bet is that Spanish society must turn the page and forget. Forget the war of influence between Madrid and Barcelona, ​​forget the clashes between the central power and the separatists of Catalonia, forget the illegal referendum organized in 2017, for or against the independence of the Catalans. An illegal referendum precisely, which earned prison sentences for those who prepared it, that is to say the separatist leaders. Sentences which would therefore be erased if this amnesty law was passed.

This text of law is therefore brought to Madrid by the socialist government. But the right and the extreme right are totally opposed to it, they see it as “unbearable clemency against those who want to destroy the unity of Spain”. The People’s Party, that is to say the conservative right, organized massive demonstrations against this amnesty law, as did the far right, the Vox movement. These two groups, right-wing and far-right, now govern together in several Spanish regions. This amnesty law offers them the opportunity to come together against a common enemy and one day, why not, to form a coalition in power.

The return of the independentist Oriol Junqueras?

If Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish Prime Minister, takes the risk of reviving divisions, it is because he did not really have a choice if he wanted to continue to govern. Its majority hangs by a thread, or rather by a few votes, those of the independence deputies. They therefore negotiated their support against the promise of this amnesty law.

If it comes into force quickly, it will also put one of the great independence figures back in the saddle, Oriol Junqueras, sentenced to thirteen years in prison for the organization of the referendum and declared ineligible. He could, thanks to this law, regain his civil rights and therefore stand in the European elections next June. Which would not fail to once again fuel this debate which is shaking Spain: preserving the unity of the kingdom or accepting the identities which want to separate from it.