Spain is to pardon the jailed Catalan separatists behind a failed 2017 independence bid, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday, in a move that could turn the page on a years-long political impasse over the region’s separatist drive.
Sanchez said that his government had “opted for reconciliation” and believes the controversial pardon — set to be approved at the weekly Cabinet meeting yesterday — would “pave the way for this path.”
“Someone must take the first step. The Spanish government will make that first step now,” Sanchez said in a speech in Barcelona to 300 members of Catalonia’s civil society.
Photo: AFP
However, he fell short of offering an amnesty to the group, a move that separatists have long called for, including some in the crowd on Monday.
Manel Cantero, a 59-year-old teacher, said the separatists needed an amnesty because “there’s nothing to pardon.”
“We exercised a fundamental right,” Cantero said, referring to the banned independence referendum in October 2017 that was marred by violence.
The referendum was followed by a short-lived declaration of independence, plunging Spain into one of its biggest political crises since democracy was restored in 1975.
The Spanish Supreme Court in 2019 convicted 12 Catalan politicians and independence advocates for their role in the independence referendum, with nine of them handed jail terms of between nine and 13 years.
The ruling triggered days of protests across Catalonia — a wealthy northeastern region with its own distinct language — that sometimes turned violent in Barcelona and other cities.
“I am convinced that releasing from jail these nine people, who represent thousands of Catalans, will be a resounding message of a desire for harmony and coexistence,” Sanchez said.
Fifty-three percent of Spaniards oppose the pardons, although 68 percent of Catalans are in favor, according to a survey by Ipsos.
Many conservatives say Sanchez is motivated mainly by a desire to hold on to power since his minority government relies in part on Catalan separatists to pass legislation in the national parliament.
Analysts said Sanchez was taking a political gamble now in the hope that he could overcome any harm to his government’s popularity before national elections due by January 2024.
It remains to be seen if the pardons would foster dialogue between Madrid and the Catalonia government, headed by President Pere Aragones.
Aragones said the pardons “correct an unjust sentence,” but he added that they were “a partial and incomplete solution.”
“Our proposal is amnesty as well as exercising the right to self-determination,” he said.
Aragones belongs to the ERC party, which is led by Oriol Junqueras, the prisoner serving the longest sentence of 13 years.
“The pardons are a key element, the key which opens the chains because the situation in Catalonia was totally blocked,” said Oriol Bartomeus, a political scientist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
However, he added that the “road will not be easy” since Catalan separatists demand the right to hold an independence referendum, which Sanchez’s government fiercely opposes.
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