Pedro Sanchez’s grubby deal to stay in power

In 2017 the Catalan premier, Carles Puigdemont, having first organised an illegal referendum and then declared unilateral independence from Spain, escaped arrest by hiding in the boot of a car. While other Catalan leaders went to prison for sedition, Puigdemont fled to Belgium where he’s spent most of the last six years living comfortably in self-imposed exile.

Now he’s preparing to make a triumphant return to Spain as a free man. The socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, who has just been officially re-elected, has granted an amnesty to Puigdemont and hundreds of others facing fines and imprisonment for their part in that push for independence. Sánchez had previously promised the Spanish people that such an amnesty was impossible. But that was before he discovered that he needed the support of the Catalan separatists to form a new government.

As he watched the general election results coming in on 23 July, Puigdemont must have been pinching himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. Although the vote for the Catalan separatist parties was much lower than in the previous election in 2019, the parliamentary arithmetic was providential – their support would be essential if the socialists were to cling on to power. Sure enough, today almost four months after July’s inconclusive general election, the votes of the ‘independentistas’ secured Sánchez’s re-election as prime minister. 

Sánchez maintains that the amnesty will defuse tensions and promote the ‘dialogue, understanding and forgiveness’ that will unite Spain. But for most Spaniards, including many who previously supported Sánchez, it is simply brazen, unprincipled opportunism – clemency for fugitives from justice in return for votes. Judges meanwhile have warned that the deal undermines the principle of equality before the law and paves the way for parliament to interfere with court decisions. The right-wing opposition has called on the European Union to intervene.

What Spaniards find especially galling is that the amnesty implies that the independence push, the concomitant public order offences and the misuse of public funds should never have been regarded as criminal. They are scandalised by Puigdemont’s vindication – especially as the only imprisonment he has had to endure was that short spell in the boot of a car. There have already been mass protests and scathing criticism not only from the right-wing parties­ – Santiago Abascal, leader of Vox, has called for civil resistance – but also from senior figures within Sánchez’s own party.

For their part, the Catalan separatists, now greatly emboldened, have vowed to continue to agitate for a referendum on independence. Deep down, however, many of them may not really want one. With support for an independent Catalonia currently at only 33 per cent, they would likely lose, thereby forfeiting their favourite grievance – that only the oppressive Spanish state prevents Catalonia becoming independent.

Winning would, paradoxically, be even worse – for then of course they would have to secede. And the moment Catalonia ceased to be part of Spain, it would also cease to be part of the European Union. For most Catalans finding themselves outside the EU is a fate just too terrible to countenance.

Fortunately for the separatists there seems no risk of a referendum being held; it would require the consent of an inconceivably large majority in the national parliament. So demanding one is risk-free and the inevitable refusal allows the separatists to burnish their narrative of victimhood.

Sánchez, meanwhile, has promised that this new legislature will be stable. But that seems highly unlikely. His government will be propped up by the anti-monarchical, radical left Sumar and, in return for a litany of expensive concessions paid for by the rest of Spain, five small regional parties – two Catalan, two Basque and one Galician. Four of these parties want their region to secede from Spain. One is heir to the political wing of ETA, the now-defunct Basque terrorist group. The right-wing opposition has taken to calling this an alliance of ‘the enemies of Spain’ – a label that the separatists relish living up to.

For many Spaniards a much better government would have been a grand coalition between the left-wing PSOE and the right-wing Partido Popular. More than two-thirds of the electorate voted for these two parties which together won 258 of the 350 seats in parliament in July’s general election. Such a coalition would have been able to form a stable, centrist government, truly representative of moderate, mainstream Spanish opinion. The radical left Sumar and the separatist parties, instead of wielding hugely disproportionate influence, would have been left as mere bystanders. Indeed, since Spaniards are averse to wasting their vote, future elections might well have seen a reduction in support for the extremists and separatists.

But Sánchez closed the door on any pact with the right long ago. For years he and his supporters have been systematically describing Vox as ‘far-right fascists’. And since the Partido Popular has often joined forces with Vox to govern town halls and regions that makes it an enabler of fascism – which is tantamount to being fascist itself. In the end Sánchez seems to have convinced himself and his supporters that he is doing Spain, the European Union and indeed democracy itself a favour by proscribing Spain’s two right-wing parties. 

Ignoring, then, the revulsion that millions of Spaniards feel, Sánchez has chosen his bedfellows and must now lie with them. He may find it even more uncomfortable than Puigdemont was in the boot of that car.