The border of Catalonia in Spain has become a precipice over which the Socialist Party is willing to push the whole country.
So are Spanish politicians at the moment, as the Iberian nation attempts to cobble together a government following July elections that resulted in a hung parliament.
The first parliamentary vote for the country’s new premier is set for next week, and center-right leader of the Partido Popular (PP), Alberto Nuñez Feijóo, is the candidate who will be voted on, though he does not at the moment have enough votes to be able to take the reins of the executive.
That will mean that current acting prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, leader of the socialist Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), will be the next candidate, whose potential premiership will be voted on in December.
But much more is at stake for the country, as on the negotiating table is amnesty for fugitive MEP Carles Puigdemont and other leaders of an illegal referendum on Catalonia’s independence from Spain that took place in 2017. The unilateral referendum organised by then-Catalan regional president, now-MEP Carles Puigdemont failed, but bringing him and other leaders to justice has turned into a political nightmare for the country.
The recent elections did not result in a clear victory for either the Right or the Left, and the fragmented political landscape has meant that small parties have become particularly important. Independentists are leveraging this in their favour.
Right now, the most influential political party in Spain is the Catalan regional separatist party Junts Per Cat. They have two clear demands in their vote for a Spanish prime minister: amnesty for Puigdemont and his collaborators and the blessing from Madrid to hold another referendum on the region’s place in Spain.
The two candidates for prime minister have two opposite policies on the question. Sánchez is willing to grant both amnesty and allow for a referendum; at least he has told Junts Per Cat that much. Feijóo remains clear that those are red lines he will not cross.
The move is tricky for the socialists, as many of their voters do not support the concessions for the Catalan separatists and there are rebels within the ranks of the party, too.
The issue has spilled out into Spain’s streets, with protests in cities across the country taking place earlier this month. Another is scheduled for Sunday, September 24 in Madrid, , organised by the PP, which has funded buses to bring Spaniards from all over the country.
Another march is planned by the pro-Spanish Catalan group Catalan Civil Society (SCC) to take place in Barcelona on October 8.
Though it will come after the first investiture debate, it is a warning to the socialists and their supporters.
The chosen date is strongly symbolic since it coincides with the sixth anniversary of the massive demonstration organized by this same association in 2017, one week after Catalonia’s unilateral independence referendum. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to express their rejection of the plans to separate Catalonia from Spain.
“Not in my name. Neither amnesty nor self-determination” is the motto chosen by the SCC, which they hope will “lead to a united response” against the demands of the independence parties.
“By selling their votes in the Congress of Deputies they have obtained privileges to consolidate their supremacist regime,” they denounced in a statement.
The President of the Madrid region, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the PP’s most popular politician, didn’t hesitate to promote the mobilizations in her regional parliament.
“I hope there is a massive response to so much ignominy on the streets of Barcelona, Madrid, and all of Spain. Spain does not deserve this,” Díaz Ayuso said.
Provocatively, Díaz Ayuso has pledged to march in the Catalan capital of Barcelona.
Even if Sánchez manages to keep the prime ministerial office, he may find that he has created a monster—an ungovernable country roiled by social strife.
