Spain’s Sánchez forms governing majority amid amnesty crisis

The Socialist Pedro Sánchez has won an investiture vote to form a new Spanish government, whose legitimacy the opposition has cast in doubt because of an agreement the prime minister has reached with Catalan nationalists.

Mr Sánchez, who has been in power since 2018, won the vote by a fine margin, receiving 179 votes in the 350-seat chamber. His socialists will govern in coalition with the Sumar left-wing alliance. To win the parliamentary vote he also needed the support of several regional parties, including nationalists from Galicia, the Basque Country and Catalonia.

“We will make sure we use this time well which has been so tough to conquer,” the Socialist leader said.

The build-up to the investiture was filled with drama caused by Mr Sánchez’s negotiation of an amnesty law with the pro-independence Catalan Republican Left (ERC) and Together for Catalonia (JxCat) parties to secure their parliamentary support.

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The bill, which was presented to Congress at the beginning of the week, seeks to withdraw criminal proceedings against more than 300 Catalan pro-independence activists and politicians for separatist activity over the last decade. Among the beneficiaries would be Carles Puigdemont, the former president of Catalonia who led a failed secession bid in 2017 before fleeing abroad and who was involved in negotiating the amnesty.

The right-wing opposition says the law will violate the constitution, give unfairly preferential treatment to Catalans and encourage future secession attempts. With opponents of the amnesty gathering outside the Socialist Party headquarters each night over the last two weeks and some veteran socialists also questioning the wisdom of the amnesty, the issue has threatened to immerse the country in a major political crisis. Some protesters demonstrated outside Congress as the investiture vote took place.

“This is a big mistake,” the leader of the conservative opposition Popular Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, said as he congratulated Mr Sánchez.

Mr Núñez Feijóo won a general election in July but failed to form a government in September.

During the debate ahead of the investiture, the leader of the far-right Vox had accused Mr Sánchez of carrying out a coup d’état and compared him to Adolf Hitler.

Shortly before the final vote Mr Sánchez appeared to address critics of the amnesty, saying: “This debate ends with a vote that decides a legitimate, democratic, constitutional government, whose power is limited by laws and a temporary mandate.”

The pressures that Mr Sánchez will face from the Catalan nationalists who are supporting his administration have already become apparent. Both the ERC and JxCat have warned Mr Sánchez to fulfil the agreements he has signed with them.

Miriam Nogueras, of JxCat, reminded him that her party “hasn’t stopped being that political force that promotes an independence referendum”. Mr Sánchez has ruled out the possibility of such a ballot.

Meanwhile, he received congratulations from several international leaders, including German chancellor Olaf Scholz, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen.

However, the Spanish conservatives have managed to ensure that the European Parliament will debate the amnesty law next week and the allegation that it undermines the separation of powers.