Spain adopts amnesty law for Catalan separatists: “reconciliation” or “polarization”?
The law “the most controversial” of the history of Spanish democracy “is now a reality”, exclaim the Spanish media.
At the end of a chaotic parliamentary process which unleashed passions across the Pyrenees, the Congress of Deputies definitively adopted, on Thursday May 30, the amnesty law for Catalan separatists. A text voted on thanks to the votes of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), the Prime Minister Pedro Sanchezthose of its left-wing allies, and the Catalan, Basque and Galician independence parties.
To believe El Periodico de Catalunya, this approval was made after a parliamentary session “hectic, full of shouts and insults”, proof that the law is very far from being unanimous (see video below). Nevertheless, continues the center-left daily, it is a “key moment” for the left-wing government coalition in power.
There “measure of grace” adopted Thursday was at the heart agreements made last fall between the PSOE and the Catalan groups ERC (republican left) and Junts (independence center right) to guarantee Sánchez’s retention in office.
“A historic milestone”
In Catalonia, the independence newspaper El Punt Avui greet “an exceptional event and a historic milestone in the conflict between the Catalan nation and the Spanish State”. On the contrary, in Madrid, the conservative site E
