Pedro Sánchez is set to reach an amnesty agreement with Catalan separatist Carles Puigdemont, which would secure Sánchez the needed parliamentary votes to become Spain’s Prime Minister.
Top negotiators from Sánchez’s Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and Puigdemont’s Junts per Catalunya are meeting today in Brussels.
Their joint governing pact will include an amnesty law, and confirm Junts’ support for Sánchez’s PM bid, observers say.
Laura Borràs, Junt’s president, flew to Brussels in the morning of November 6, where she will be joined at the negotiating table by the party’s secretary general and its president in the regional Parliament of Catalonia.
Junts demands an amnesty law pardoning people convicted for taking part in the 2017 independence referendum and unilateral declaration of independence.
Puigdemont’s party also seeks an acknowledgement that the Spanish government used lawfare tactics against Catalan separatists–using laws strategically against dissidents or political rivals.
Pursuing political opponents through the courts “does not seek to do justice but to achieve, through means unacceptable in a democracy, political effects through the judiciary”, Puigdemont said yesterday.
A broad pardon would also mean pardoning separatists convicted on other types of charges, including Borràs herself who was convicted for document falsification.
There are no “important obstacles” for the PSOE and Junts to reach an agreement, says Jaume Asens, a spokesman and negotiator for the progressive party Sumar.
The deal is expected to lead to a vote on Sánchez becoming Prime Minister.
Sánchez also appears close to finalising deals with other regional-nationalist groups this week, including the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG).
