Spain: thousands of people demonstrate against the pardon of the Catalan separatists

Published on : 06/13/2021 – 15:52

Thousands of people demonstrated, Sunday, June 13, in the center of Madrid, at the call of the Spanish right, to denounce the will of the Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, to pardon the Catalan separatists condemned for the attempted secession of 2017 .

Convened at midday on the Colon square, chosen for the huge Spanish flag which flies there, this demonstration brought together 25,000 people, according to the police.

Pablo Casado and Santiago Abascal, the numbers one of the Popular Party (PP), the main opposition party, and of the far-right formation Vox, were present along with other right-wing figures.

“The Spaniards will not pardon him”

“Sanchez must take note: he will pardon them (the separatists) but the Spaniards will not pardon him,” said José Luis Martínez Almeida, the mayor of Madrid and spokesperson for the PP.

In February 2019, the right had already gathered in the same place tens of thousands of people to call on Pedro Sanchez to resign, accusing him of having “betrayed” Spain by dialoguing with the Catalan separatists.

While this pardon, which could be formalized before the summer cutoff, causes great controversy in the country, the Prime Minister defends it as a gesture of appeasement in order to find a way out of the crisis in Catalonia.

“I understand that citizens may have objections (…) thinking about what happened in 2017. But I ask them (…) for understanding and magnanimity because the challenge we have before us, that is to say coexistence, is worth it, “he said on Wednesday June 9 during a visit to Argentina.

But the right accuses the Socialist of making a new concession to the Catalan separatists on which its minority government depends in part in Parliament.

“The only thing Sanchez wants is to stay in power at any cost,” Pablo Martínez, a protester from Oviedo, northern Spain, told AFP with his wife and her daughter.

Prison sentences ranging from 9 to 13 years

The Supreme Court, which tried these separatists in 2019, opposed this measure in a report submitted recently, justifying its opinion by the fact that the condemned “did not show the slightest sign of repentance”.

For the most part ex-members of the separatist regional government of Carles Puigdemont, these twelve separatists were condemned for their role in the organization of a self-determination referendum on October 1, 2017, however banned by the courts and which had been followed by some weeks later by a unilateral declaration of independence.

Of these twelve, nine are serving prison terms ranging from 9 to 13 years. Including Oriol Junqueras, leader of the Republican Left Party of Catalonia (ERC), a key ally of the Sanchez government in Parliament.

“The cost is high for the Socialist Party”

In an open letter published Monday, June 7, the latter took a step towards the Prime Minister by showing himself in favor of a pardon, while the separatists demanded an amnesty, and by making self-criticism of the unilateral dimension of the secession attempt of which he was one of the protagonists.

“We must be aware that our response was not seen as fully legitimate by part of society either,” he wrote.

The most radical fringe of the independence movement, which includes the party of Carles Puigdemont, which fled to Belgium in 2017, however, still advocates the unilateral path.

ERC promotes dialogue

At the head of the Catalan regional government for a few weeks, with the moderate Pere Aragonés, ERC advocates dialogue with the Spanish government, from which it wants to demand an agreement on the organization of a self-determination referendum. A claim already rejected by Madrid.

The formal dialogue between the Spanish government and the Catalan regional government, launched in early 2020 in exchange for ERC’s support for Pedro Sanchez’s reappointment to power but suspended because of the pandemic, should resume soon.

And ahead of these discussions, “all the pro-independence leaders are aware” that the concession that Pedro Sanchez is going to make with this grace “is a decision whose cost is high for the Socialist Party, because if there is a majority in favor of grace in Catalonia, a majority is against in Spain “, underlines Ana Sofía Cardenal, professor of political science at the Open University of Catalonia.

With AFP