Pedro Sanchez has once more won in his daring and contentious gamble. On Thursday, November 16, the Socialist was reelected prime minister with the votes of 179 MPs (Socialists, radical left, Catalan independentists, Basque nationalists and independentists...) to 171 (the conservatives of the Popular Party [PP] and MPs of the far-right Vox party), with a majority of 176 needed. Despite initially being seen as the underdog before the July 23 legislative elections, he confirmed his resilience at the head of an executive combining the Socialists and the radical left, which he has led since 2018.
Sanchez won Thursday's vote by leveraging agreements negotiated over three months in secret with Catalonia's pro-independence parties, whose MPs were essential to his election. One clause in these agreements deeply divides the electorate, including the Socialists. It concerns an amnesty, an essential condition set by the pro-independence party Junts to enable Sanchez to reach an absolute majority thanks to the vote of its seven MPs.
For some, Sanchez has shown political courage by accepting this amnesty, which he rejected in principle before the elections. The bill would erase offenses committed between 2012 and 2023 in connection with the Catalan independence movement's organization of the 2014 and 2017 referendums. Its passage would allow Carles Puigdemont, former president of the Catalan regional government, to return to Spain without imprisonment. At the helm in Barcelona during the secession attempt in October 2017, he was prosecuted by the Spanish prosecutors for sedition and embezzlement funds, and fled to Belgium to escape. In Brussels, he negotiated the terms of the agreement between his party, Junts, and the Spanish Partido Socialista Obrero Español (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, PSOE).
For others, 51-year-old Sanchez has shown a readiness to prioritize his return to power over upholding the equality of Spaniards under the law and even the unity of the kingdom. Besides the opposition, several associations of magistrates and civil servants have expressed fears of an attack on the separation of powers. The amnesty is also criticized by left-wing figures, such as writer Javier Cercas and former Socialist prime minister Felipe Gonzalez, and is rejected by 40% of Socialist voters, according to polls.
As a few hundred people demonstrated against his nomination in front of Congress, Sanchez presented his candidacy as the only alternative to the threat of a "democratic retreat" which he believed a national alliance between the right and Vox would entail.
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