Rejection of Catalan amnesty underlines instability of Spanish government

The Spanish parliament’s rejection this week of an amnesty law for Catalan nationalists is a major blow for the Bill itself and the government of Socialist Pedro Sánchez, but it is not necessarily the end of the road for either.

On Tuesday, parliament blocked passage of the law as the pro-independence Together for Catalonia (JxCat) party joined the right-wing opposition in voting against the legislation.

JxCat had demanded that Sánchez present the amnesty Bill in exchange for supporting his investiture vote in November. However, in recent days doubts had been sown about whether it was robust enough to survive legal challenges.

JxCat’s self-exiled leader, Carles Puigdemont, is under investigation for possible terrorist-related crimes due to his alleged links to pro-independence protests which brought much of Barcelona to a halt in 2019. With terrorism not cited in the amnesty Bill, Puigdemont risked being excluded from it. Last week, Sánchez’s Socialists and JxCat amended the Bill in an attempt to remedy this, differentiating between terrorism that knowingly and gravely violates human rights and that which does not.

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However, the national court judge who is investigating Puigdemont and the events of 2019, Manuel García-Castellón, responded by stating that the former Catalan president may have breached human rights with his actions.

With another judge, Joaquín Aguirre, suggesting this week that Puigdemont may be investigated for high treason for alleged contacts with Russian officials ahead of the failed secession attempt he led in 2017, the amnesty law looked even more vulnerable. Meanwhile, longstanding suspicions that Spain’s judiciary is brazenly politicised appeared to be justified.

More than 300 Catalan nationalists stand to benefit from the amnesty, but Puigdemont has the highest profile of them all. His former colleague in the Catalan government, Marta Rovira, is also under investigation for terrorism, as are several pro-independence activists.

“If we had voted in favour it would have invalidated the commitment to a comprehensive, full amnesty, without exclusions,” Puigdemont wrote on X after the parliamentary session.

The Spanish government, however, has not hidden its fury at this manoeuvre.

“It’s incomprehensible that JxCat has voted against a law that they themselves negotiated,” said Félix Bolaños, minister for the prime minister’s office.

The Bill now returns to a parliamentary commission where it will be revised before resubmission later this month —assuming the government and JxCat can agree on its content. It might be only a brief delay, but it hampers the momentum driving the controversial law. Tuesday’s tight vote also highlighted the instability of Sánchez’s new government, a left-wing coalition propped up by an array of nationalists, including JxCat.

The opposition has seized on this, casting Puigdemont’s seven MPs as effectively holding the country to ransom as he squeezes concessions out of the prime minister.

JxCat has warned it will bring down the government if its demands regarding a revised amnesty law are not met. The party’s threats have already become a recurring motif of the new legislature. However, the amnesty Bill’s passage will dictate how JxCat behaves.

After returning to Congress for another vote, the Bill would then go to the Senate, where it is expected to remain for two months before approval and a final vote back in the lower house. After that, the amnesty would be implemented on a case-by-case basis, assuming it was protected from the legal challenges of an openly hostile judiciary. Given his determination to see that process through, Puigdemont will almost certainly wait at least a few months before considering the nuclear option.

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