Spain passes amnesty law for Catalan nationalists
Spain’s Congress has approved the government’s contentious Catalan amnesty law, which now faces implementation after overcoming its final parliamentary hurdle. The law seeks to withdraw pending legal actions against Catalan nationalists involved in separatist activities, including the 2017 referendum and failed independence bid. The law passed with a narrow majority: 177 lawmakers voted in favour, while 172 voted against.
Introduced by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist Party (PSOE), the law has spent six months in parliament. It was initially approved in a congressional vote in March and faced delays in the opposition-controlled Senate, which could not block it entirely. Upon publication in the official gazette, judges will have two months to apply the law. Although legal appeals may arise, they are not expected to hinder its implementation.
The amnesty is set to benefit nearly 400 Catalan nationalists facing legal action since November 2011, including those involved in the 2017 independence referendum deemed illegal. It also extends to police officers prosecuted for attacking voters during the referendum. The most notable beneficiary is Carles Puigdemont, the former Catalan president who led the 2017 secession attempt and has since lived in self-exile in Belgium.
Puigdemont’s Together for Catalonia (JxCat) party, along with the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), demanded amnesty in exchange for supporting Sánchez’s coalition government. Puigdemont plans to return to Spain for an investiture vote in the Catalan parliament, likely in June. Despite running as the lead candidate for JxCat and coming second to the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC), he currently lacks sufficient support to form a government.
The PSOE, along with their coalition partner Sumar, JxCat, ERC, the pro-independence Basque EH Bildu coalition, the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG), and the far-left Podemos, voted in favour of the law. The conservative People’s Party (PP) and the far-right Vox opposed it, joined by conservative factions from Navarre and the Canary Islands.