Sánchez secures term renewal as right-wing steps up ‘patriotic resistance’

Spain’s acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez finally managed to put together all the pieces of the complex political puzzle he needs to return to power, as right-wing and far-right forces vowed on Sunday to step up their patriotic resistance to the controversial amnesty law Sanchez agreed to in exchange for Catalan backing until new elections are called.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona, Malaga and other large cities voiced their opposition to the amnesty law on Sunday in a coordinated protest organised by the main opposition force Partido Popular (PP/EPP), and far-right VOX (ECR), parliament’s third largest.

Half a million attended the protests in Madrid’s city centre, according to PP sources – though official estimates said it was 80,000 – while official figures cite 6,000 protesters in Barcelona.

PP, which won the 23 July snap elections but failed to form a majority, will continue to organise protests “until (new) elections” are called, its leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo stressed on Sunday.

“Spain is going to have a prime minister who has bought his investiture in exchange for the judicial impunity of his partners (the Catalan separatists),” the PP leader stressed, accusing Sánchez of having “no scruples” about “selling out” Spain to the Catalan and Basque separatists because of the Socialist leader’s “ambition for power”.

“Spain will reverse this new process of division, and we will regain our equality, our freedom and our dignity”, he added.

Meanwhile, VOX President Santiago Abascal accused Sánchez of leading “a coup d’état” and promised his party would maintain “a permanent mobilisation” against the future government.

After the protest in Madrid’s historic centre Puerta del Sol, some 3,000 people moved to Ferraz Street, where the PSOE has its headquarters, shouting offensive slogans such as “Pedro Sánchez, son of a bitch” or “Madrid will be the tomb of Sanchismo”, among the mildest ones.

After securing backing from separatist right-wing party JxCat last week and from left-wing ERC the week before that, in exchange for the controversial amnesty law, among other things, Sanchez also got backing from the moderate nationalist Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and the regional formation Coalición Canaria on Friday.

Coalición Canaria gave its support in exchange for numerous economic concessions for the ultra-peripheral Canary Islands, even though its only MP at the national level, Cristina Valido, has made it clear that her group rejects the future amnesty law.

The political and economic concessions made by the PSOE to the Basque Country include the possible future transfer of full Social Security competencies from Madrid to the prosperous northern Spanish region, full compliance with the 1979 Gernika Statute on regional autonomy and negotiation of ‘national recognition’ of the region, among other points.

As PNV parliamentary spokesman Aitor Esteban explained last week, the support of his party’s five deputies for Sánchez’s appointment – which is expected to take place by the end of the week – is in exchange for measures to increase the region’s capacity for ‘self-government’.

Heavy political concessions

Just as JxCat leader and former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont stressed last week, the PNV’s parliamentary support for Sánchez is to “give stability” to the entire legislature, including approving the Spanish budget, not just for the investiture.

However, like Puidgemont, PNV has placed the same sword of Damocles over the head of Sánchez: the Basque party’s support will be conditional on the “respect” of the pact signed.

The other main Basque political force and rival of the PNV, the radical separatist EH-Bildu party, considered by some on the right to be the “political arm” of the now defunct Basque terrorist organisation ETA, confirmed a few weeks ago that it would support Sánchez with its six deputies in the Spanish parliament.

But unlike JxCat, the PNV has not gone as far as the progressive Sumar platform in its “political mortgage” on the future PSOE government, refraining from calling for an “international mediator” to verify compliance with the agreements, as the Catalan separatist party has done. However, there will be a bilateral commission with the PSOE to check that the agreements are being fulfilled.

After the agreement with the PNV and Coalición Canaria, Sánchez has secured 176 votes – out of a total of 350 seats in parliament – he needs to be invested as the new prime minister with an absolute majority: he will gather 179 votes, including the vote of the only MP from the pro-independence regional party Bloque Nacionalista Galego (Galicia, northeast).

After a week of violent riots against the future amnesty law staged by extreme-right demonstrators and a few PP partisans before the PSOE headquarters in Madrid, Sánchez urged the PP on Saturday to “accept the result of the ballot box (after the snap general election of 23 July)”, and have “sanity and restraint”.

PSOE’s old guard challenges ‘Sanchez’s diktat’

“My commitment to Spanish society is firm: we will govern for all Spaniards for four more years, with social advances in favour of the social majority, with coexistence and institutional stability,” Sánchez stressed on Saturday at the European Socialist Party (PES) congress in Málaga (Andalusia, south), although he did not mention the controversial amnesty law.

But Sanchez’s success and, as he puts it, “resilience” in overcoming multiple obstacles (including an attempt by his rivals in the PSOE to oust him) has been partly overshadowed by criticism from the party’s so-called “old guard”, including former prime minister Felipe González – a symbol of what the PP calls “true socialists” as opposed to Sánchez’s “Sanchismo” or allegedly dogmatic and autocratic way of running the party, far from its original “core values”.

Last Friday, several regional presidents who are members of the PSOE, including the president of Castilla la Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, vehemently opposed the amnesty law because “it erases a crime without being accountable to justice”.

“Worse than erasing the crime is trying to rewrite what happened” with the “false account” included in the agreement between JxCat and the PSOE, he lamented.

(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)