by Alessio Cuel –
Pedro Sánchez obtained a slim majority in the Spanish Congress of Deputies (179 votes out of 350 in the lower house, the only one that votes with confidence) and is therefore officially Prime Minister of Spain for the third time in a row.
Although it is considered a controversial agreement, even by some members of the Socialist Party itself, the one with the Catalan independentists of Junts is, numbers in hand, decisive for the maintenance of the majority.
The pact between Catalan socialists and independentists, in addition to provoking the wrath of right-wing parties and their supporters, opens up more than one question on the connections between politics and the judicial system. In fact, if the amnesty law that Sánchez has undertaken to promote were to be approved by parliament, Junts leader Puigdemont himself, who had already fled to Belgium to escape arrest in Spain, could benefit from the extinction of his crimes.
The agreement between socialists and Catalan independentists, in Sánchez’s best expectations, aims to distance the nationalist right from the government in Madrid. As demonstrated by the vote on 23 July and above all by the tensions present in the country, however, Spain is deeply divided into at least two opposing political fronts.
In the coming months, the renewed vigor of Catalan independence may contribute to fueling the overheating of the political climate, whose supporters will potentially be galvanized by the government agreement and, possibly, by the promulgation of the amnesty law. Finally, it is destined to cause considerable discussion about the conflict between politics and the judiciary that this agreement is destined to exacerbate.
Warm climate, therefore, in a Spain that is preparing to conclude its European semester characterized by the motto “Europe, closer”. A motto that symbolizes a spirit of human, political and institutional proximity and which sounds almost paradoxical, if you think of the centrifugal forces and divisions (right-left, nationalism-independence, judiciary-politics) present within the country.
