An amnesty for those involved in Catalonia’s secessionist attempts in 2017 is needed but is not enough to solve the political conflict between the region and Spain’s central government, Catalan Separatist Leader Oriol Junqueras said on Sunday.
In an interview published on Sunday by La Vanguardia, Junqueras, president of the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC/Greens/EFA), said an “amnesty is a necessary but not sufficient condition for resolving the conflict.”
He insisted it would also be “essential” to organise a referendum on Catalonia’s self-determination.
Junqueras and other Catalan pro-independence activists were banned from holding public office until 2031 February despite receiving a government pardon for the crime of sedition in 2021.
The liberal centre-right Catalan separatist formation Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia, JXCat), led by former regional president Carles Puigdemont, a fugitive from Spanish justice, has also set the same conditions to solve the long-standing “conflict” with Madrid.
Catalonia is scheduled to hold regional elections in 2025 unless there is an early election. The battle between ERC and Junts per Catalunya to wave the flag of Catalan “nationalism” is expected to be fierce, some analysts predict.
In the 23 July general election, Catalonia’s Socialist Party (PSC) won the race, followed by Junts per Catalunya and ERC, El Periódico reported.
Puigdemont’s political “price” to support Sánchez
The parliamentary support of ERC and Junts per Catalunya, as well as the backing of other regional parties, among them pro-independence Basque formations PNV and EH-Bildu, are crucial for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (PSOE/S&D) if he wants to put a progressive government in place with the left-wing platform Sumar.
But Puigdemont’s support will not be ´for free´.
He is expected to announce his party’s “official” conditions for voting in favour of Sánchez at a conference in Brussels on Tuesday.
Among these, both ERC and Junts demand a general amnesty for those involved in the 2017 events – some 3,000 people could be affected, according to Spanish media – and a referendum, but also more financial resources and that the Catalan language be co-official in Spanish and EU institutions, among others.
“We have been working for a long time to move in this direction (…) We worked to obtain the freedom of political prisoners, the return of exiles – a few being able to return-, to modify the Penal Code and abolish the crime of sedition and modify the crime of embezzlement”, Junqueras pointed out.
“Amnesty is fundamental, and in the last four years, we have cleared the way for it to be possible now. But it is also important for the issue of the right to decide to be present at the political negotiating table between the governments of Spain and Catalonia”, he said.
However, Junqueras acknowledged that amnesty is not ERC’s only condition for a new investiture of Pedro Sánchez.
“It is not the end point of anything, but the starting point. Without it, there is no condition of equality in the negotiation to resolve the political conflict”, the separatist leader concluded.
(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.EURACTIV.es)
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