Spain’s Sanchez Gets Long-Sought Win With Catalan Amnesty Law

(Bloomberg) -- Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has finally managed to clinch an agreement with a group of Catalan lawmakers to pass an amnesty for hundreds of separatists, ending more than six months negotiations that have paralyzed parliament.

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The law passed by 178 to 172. A majority requires 176 votes.

The approval comes a day after Catalonia’s regional President Pere Aragones called snap elections for May 12, throwing Spanish politics into turmoil. A deal to pass the law had been struck before the election was called.

The ballot presents a major political test for Sanchez, and will also serve to show who’s the biggest beneficiary of the amnesty, the separatist parties or the prime minister’s Socialists.

The amnesty opens the door for hundreds of pro-independence activists to avoid criminal charges. It also signals that former regional Catalan president Carles Puigdemont may be able to return to Spain, from where he fled in 2017 to escape arrest, and maybe even run in May. Puigdemont headed the failed 2017 independence push and led the amnesty negotiations.

Puigdemont’s party, the right-leaning Junts per Catalunya, and Aragones’s left-leaning ERC, are staunch rivals. They will both be competing for first place in the Catalan vote, as will the Socialists.

The amnesty law shows the extent to which Sanchez is willing to backtrack on his own positions in order to retain power, after he said ahead of an inconclusive national election in July that an amnesty was out of the question. He later said that he had no choice but to “make a virtue of necessity,” even as he faced widespread criticism from rivals, as well as members of his own Socialist party.

The law doesn’t become effective immediately. First it must go to the opposition-controlled Senate, which has two months to vote. If it’s rejected, it returns to the parliament where it can be approved in a second vote.

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