Struggling to obtain a majority, Pedro Sanchez now declares himself in favor of an amnesty for certain Catalan activists. This concession provokes the fury of the right and the extreme right.
At the call of Vox, 100,000 demonstrators marched in the streets of Madrid on Sunday October 29. The far-right party wants to do everything to prevent the left from remaining in power in Spain, which remains one of the few countries in Europe still ruled by socialists.
To understand this manifestation, we must go back in time. This summer, the Spanish legislative elections did not produce a clear winner. Neither of the two major parties (one on the left, the other on the right) gathered enough votes to obtain an absolute majority. In this case, the only solution is to negotiate with other parties and try to form alliances. The right has already tried to do this. She fails to reach majority. Now it’s the left that’s getting behind it. The leader of the socialists, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, therefore wants to obtain the support of small political groups to be able to govern.
Six years after the secession attempt, “reconciliation”?
Except that the small parties in question, therefore very popular, are also very controversial in Spain. However, to build a majority, the socialist leader has no choice: mathematically, he must ally himself with two independence parties in Catalonia which embody the most heated divide in Spain. They are indeed demanding an independent Catalonia, that is to say a new country and separation from Madrid. Six years ago, Catalan activists attempted to secede by organizing a referendum. An obviously illegal attempt which was repressed at the time by the central government.
But this time, these independence parties are in a position of strength and they are taking advantage of it. They raise the stakes. Among their demands, the amnesty of all Catalan activists prosecuted for having tried to organize this independence referendum, in other words, the abandonment of all legal proceedings. For the first time this weekend, socialist leader Pedro Sanchez supported this idea. A concession in the name of “reconciliation”, he justifies.
The right and the far right denounce an electoral bargain, which “endangers the unity of Spain”. Hence the demonstration on Sunday in Madrid with cries of “Sanchez, traitor to the country”. A fairly tense political climate therefore around these negotiations, which could last until the end of November. If they fail, there will be new elections in January.