BRUSSELS — Separatist leader Carles Puigdemont laid down an ultimatum to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Monday: Pardon all the Catalan independence plotters or face losing power. Spain is in political limbo after elections in July failed to deliver a clear winner. Sánchez is best placed to cling on as prime minister — but he needs the backing of Puigdemont’s Junts party to prop up his Socialist government.
Puigdemont fled Spain for Brussels after triggering an illegal referendum on independence for Catalonia, where he was president, in 2017. Spanish authorities hit Puigdemont and his allies with multiple charges in the aftermath of the vote. Many of those behind the referendum are still wanted for disobedience and embezzlement.
On Monday, Puigdemont named his price for supporting Sánchez’s bid to remain in office. “The end of the persecution of the independence movement is a matter of dignity,” he told his supporters in Brussels. Sánchez must order the country’s prosecutors to suspend their cases against those involved in the movement, he said.
Simultaneously, Puigdemont rejected any talk of a far-reaching amnesty that would include Spanish police officers prosecuted for committing acts of brutality in the aftermath of the referendum. That’s an idea floated by Socialist Party members to make the pardons more palatable to the wider Spanish public. “The oppressors cannot receive the same treatment as their victims,” Puigdemont said.
Last July’s national elections resulted in a hung parliament in which neither the left-wing or right-wing political blocs gained enough seats to control the 350-seat chamber. Without the votes of Puigdemont’s Junts party Sánchez will not be able to form a government and Spain will be heading for fresh elections.
The Catalan leader said that he was not interested in agreeing to “a patch,” but that he instead wanted to forge “a historic agreement, one that no regime or Spanish government has been able to reach since [the Catalan uprising of] 1714.” Although he did not explicitly demand Sánchez let him hold a second independence referendum, Puigdemont said that talks would hinge on “recognition and respect for the democratic legitimacy of the independence movement.”
“Self-determination is the recognition of the Catalan nation,” he added. “The Catalan people have that right.” Puigdemont said another prerequisite for talks would be the promotion of the Catalan language in the European Union. As part of an agreement to give the Socialist Party the presidency of the Spanish parliament last month, Madrid asked Brussels to make Spain’s co-official languages official languages of the EU. Ministers in the bloc’s General Affairs Council are set to take up the issue when they meet later this month.
The separatist leader’s speech came one day after Sánchez underscored his willingness to “to turn the page … To continue advancing together, co-existing.” “This legislature must be the one that definitively leaves behind the fractures wrought in 2017,” he said at a press conference in Madrid.
On Monday Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz also travelled to Brussels, becoming the first high-ranking Spanish government representative to meet with Puigdemont since he fled Spain six years ago. Diaz told the press that she had come to the meeting in the European Parliament only as the head of her left-wing Sumar coalition, and not as an emissary of the government in Madrid.
Both Sánchez and Díaz have been criticized for their attempted rapprochement with the separatist leader, who is still sought by Spanish authorities. One of the most powerful socialist barons, Castilla-La Mancha regional President Emiliano García-Page, on Monday said that granting the separatists an amnesty would be “immoral” and that what was discussed at Díaz’s private meetings in Brussels should be made public.
Despite their efforts, Sánchez and Díaz have apparently failed to persuade Puigdemont that they can become his trusted partners. As a final pre-condition for further talks, the separatist leader said that a neutral rapporteur would need to be appointed to mediate and verify any agreements. “In Spanish politics no precautions are ever enough,” he said.
Source: POLITICO
