This is a key measure for socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
Spanish deputies voted this Thursday for an amnesty law for Catalan separatists convicted or prosecuted for the abortive secession attempt of 2017 in Catalonia (north-eastern region of the country).
Negotiated by the Socialist Party with the two Catalan independence parties, the measure was adopted by 178 votes to 172. It must now be submitted to the Senate, controlled by the right, fiercely opposed to this measure and which has promised to delay as long as possible his exam.
Pedro Sánchez did not speak before the vote.
The vote comes in a climate of extreme tension between the left-wing government and the People's Party (the main right-wing opposition), which have been throwing accusations of corruption at each other on a daily basis for weeks.
The PP and the far right consider this law to be a case of “corruption”.
The opposition denounces a “submission”
In a speech before the vote, PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo launched a devastating attack on the measure, claiming that "this law divides Spain in two" and denouncing "an absolute absence of scruples and convictions" of from Pedro Sánchez.
“This law will be approved because it is the only way Mr. Sánchez has to remain president of the government for a little while longer,” he continued.
It “is not reconciliation” with Catalonia put forward by the government to justify it, “it is submission” to the separatists, he said.
The amnesty, which should benefit around 400 people, aims to end prosecutions and annul convictions stemming from the aborted secession attempt of Catalonia (north-east of the country) in 2017, the worst political crisis of contemporary Spanish history.
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Pedro Sánchez pardoned nine separatists convicted for their role in the events of 2017 three years ago, but assured during the campaign for the July legislative elections that he was opposed to an amnesty.
The electoral arithmetic, however, forced him to change his mind, because the results of the July 23 vote returned the support of the two Catalan independence parties - Together for Catalonia (JxCat), of Carles Puigdemont, who lives in exile in Belgium since 2017 to escape Spanish justice, and Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) - essential to its return to power.
A first vote on an amnesty law took place on January 30, but it ended in a humiliating rejection for Pedro Sánchez, the seven deputies from Carles Puigdemont's party having voted against a text that they considered insufficient.
The fear of Carles Puigdemont, who led the 2017 unilateral independence attempt and is still the subject of an arrest warrant, was that the bill, as it was then designed, would not protect him against possible prosecution for terrorism or treason.
Investigation opened for “terrorism”
A month later, the highest Spanish judicial body announced the opening of an investigation against him for “terrorism”.
The socialists therefore had to reopen negotiations and accept JxCat's demands.
The new version of the law voted on Thursday by deputies no longer contains any reference to the Spanish Penal Code and takes as its sole criterion European standards (2017 European directive and European Convention on Human Rights), which give a different definition of terrorism.
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As if he was already anticipating the appeals that will inevitably be filed against the law with the Spanish courts, one of the seven JxCat deputies, Josep María Cervera, stressed before the vote that the text was “in accordance with international law”.
But he also issued an unambiguous warning to socialists about his party's intentions.
Addressing the government directly, he stressed that despite the amnesty, "the political and historical conflict between the Catalan nation and the Spanish nation still exists."
What the amnesty law does, he said, is “create an opportunity to directly negotiate the future of Catalonia, a Catalonia that we want free”, in other words independent.
Showing himself to be very optimistic, Carles Puigdemont declared this Wednesday evening to the press in the corridors of the European Parliament, of which he is a member, that the amnesty law would come into force "probably at the end of May" and envisaged his return to Catalonia in the weeks following.