People’s Party leader Alberto Feijoo (center) leads a massive demonstration in Madrid Sunday to protest a potential pardon for Catalans who led an independence movement in 2017. Photo by Borha Sanchez-Trillo/EPA-EFE
Tens of thousands of demonstrators flooded into Madrid on Sunday to protest a potential amnesty deal for separatists who led a failed push for Catalonia to secede from the country in 2017.
The pardons issue arose following a snap general election in July, which ended with the incoming conservative government failing to secure enough votes to assume majority power in the nation’s parliament, The Guardian reported. Advertisement
The outcome of the vote also prevented a new government that would have formed under People’s Party leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo, who won the election.
In an effort to stay in power, current Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was considering a deal to join forces with the hardline Catalan independence party, and its leader — the former Catalan regional president Carles Puigdemont, who fled into exile six years ago to evade arrest for his role in the independence movement.
However, Puigdemont threatened to withhold his support from Sanchez unless Catalans were absolved of any criminal charges in the secession attempt.
Sanchez, who issued pardons two years ago to nine of the Catalan separatists who were convicted on sedition-related charges, has indicated he was considering the move — sparking anger among People’s Party leaders who organized Sunday’s massive protest in a continuing effort to oust him. Advertisement
At least 40,000 people descended on the nation’s capital as Feijoo addressed the crowd who repeated chants for Sanchez to resign, Madrid newspaper La Razon reported.
“The left sees pardons as coexistence, an amnesty as a normalization and losing as winning,” he told the crowd. “Don’t call us Spaniards stupid because we’re not.”
