There is always a political cost to staying in power without a clear majority. The one paid by Spain's prime minister, the socialist Pedro Sanchez, to keep his job, is likely to be exorbitant. Having come second in the July 23 parliamentary elections, just behind Alberto Nuñez Feijoo's center-right People's Party (PP), the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) has chosen to negotiate a deal in which Catalan independence supporters will play a crucial role. This epilogue to four months of intense negotiations certainly enables the left to lead the country, while removing the threat of a coalition between the right and the far right. But the compromise has the potential to further polarize Spain, without ensuring its political stability.
In exchange for giving support to Sanchez on Thursday, November 16, the pro-independence members of the Junts party of the region's former governor, Carles Puigdemont, obtained a broad amnesty wiping out the legal proceedings against them following their unsuccessful sedition attempt in 2017. Puigdemont, who had fled to Belgium to evade Spanish justice, will be able to return home free to pursue his dreams of Catalan independence.
This amnesty law, negotiated in the utmost secrecy, was all the more shocking to the Spanish public since, shortly before the parliamentary elections, Sanchez had promised not to engage in such a process. Today, the stated aim is to avoid turning Puigdemont and other pro-independence activists into martyrs, as a new trial and probable conviction of Catalonia's ex-governor would have rekindled resentment.
Excessive influence for independentists
While it's true that the fractures opened up by the issue of independence won't be settled in the courts alone, the prime minister's desire for appeasement is having a hard time getting through to the population, far beyond the right wing and far right wing, which are incensed by what is seen as a betrayal.
It is not so much the principle of the amnesty that is open to criticism as the way it was negotiated. The agreement gives pride of place to a shameless rewriting of history and to concessions that are hardly likely to reconcile the two sides. Its wording leaves little doubt that it was the independentists who dictated the broad strokes of the agreement, giving the text an air of self-amnesty that is hardly compatible with the "defense of coexistence among Spaniards," claimed by the leader of the PSOE.
By making a pact with a party that has always advocated radicalism, and which has been denounced by Sanchez himself as an unreliable partner, the prime minister risks losing any remaining political credibility. The chosen tactic is all the more dubious in that the agreement gives an inordinate amount of influence to the pro-independence faction, with any debate on Catalonia's political future liable at any moment to turn into a vote of no confidence in the majority.
Added to this potential instability is the heightened risk of dividing the country. The far-right Vox party, which now governs five Spanish regions in coalition with the PP, has largely built its success on the reaction to Catalonia's pro-independence temptation. By reviving the latter with the sole aim of keeping himself in power, Mr. Sanchez is taking a gamble that is helping to strengthen the far right he claims to be fighting.