Spain’s governing coalition files amnesty bill for Catalan separatists

BARCELONA — The left-wing and separatist political parties backing Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Monday jointly filed a controversial bill to grant an amnesty to all persons prosecuted for their involvement in the Catalan separatist movement over the past decade.

The bill presented by Sánchez’s Socialist Party and most of the political groups expected to back his bid to form a new, minority government on Thursday argues amnesty is justified to guarantee “coexistence.”

The granting of blanket amnesty was a key factor in resolving months of political paralysis in Spain, which has been without an effective government since last summer’s national elections resulted in a hung parliament. The presentation of the bill was the main demand of the Catalan separatist Junts party, whose backing will now permit Sánchez to form a new government.

The legislative proposal does not modify laws for which individuals were prosecuted, which means similar judicial procedures could be launched against those attempting illegal acts linked to separatism in the future.

The blanket amnesty cancels “penal, administrative and financial” penalties imposed on more than 300 people linked to the independence movement between January 1, 2012 and November 13, 2023, including the failed 2017 Catalan independence referendum. It is also expected to benefit the 73 police officers indicted for committing acts of violence against protestors in Catalonia.

The bill will likely sail through the lower house of Spain’s parliament but face stiff opposition in the upper house, which is controlled by the center-right Popular Party.

The proposal’s preamble focuses on the proposed amnesty’s constitutionality and highlights its compliance with European law by citing similar measures applied in other EU countries. The text specifically mentions amnesty granted to young offenders in Portugal on the occasion of Pope Francis’ visit this past summer and makes reference to France’s 1988 amnesty of Melanesian separatists in its overseas territory of New Caledonia.

Popular Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who held mass rallies across Spain to protest against the amnesty bill on Sunday, vowed to challenge the bill in the courts.

“This is a new humiliation,” Miguel Tellado, the Popular Party’s vice-president for territorial organization, said in a press conference. Tellado said new elections should be held because the amnesty had not been included in the Socialist Party’s electoral program and urged Sánchez to “flee Spain in the trunk of a car” as former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont did in the wake of the 2017 independence vote.

Xavier Antich, president of Catalan civil society association Òmnium, told POLITICO that the fact that so many parties had jointly filed the bill reflected “the widespread social consensus that political conflicts need to be solved with politics, not judges or repression.”

But Antich predicted it would be “a long time” before anyone would be able to take advantage of the amnesty, and even longer before figures like Puigdemont, who is sought by Spanish authorities and has lived in self-imposed exile in Belgium since 2017, are able to set foot in Spain.

“Passing this bill in parliament won’t be enough because many in the judiciary are opposed to it and will seek to interpret the law as they see fit,” he said. “Until all the legal recourses are exhausted it will be too risky to come home.”