In a political gamble, Spain's Socialist prime minister pardoned nine leaders of the illegal 2017 independence drive in Catalonia, setting up both the grounds to settle or deepen Spain's territorial and political crisis over the future of the Barcelona region.
(CN) --- Seeking to settle Spain's most vexing political dilemma, Socialist Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Tuesday announced his government is issuing pardons to nine imprisoned leaders convicted for their roles in a failed Catalan independence drive in 2017.
The pardons will allow the Catalan leaders to walk out of prison sometime in the next few days and reenter Spanish society as highly divisive figures – beloved by pro-independence Catalans and viewed as traitors by their fiercest critics, who are mostly found on the political right.
For weeks, Sanchez had hinted that his views on clemency had changed and that he now saw pardons as an effective salve to heal wounds and gets talks about Catalonia's future back on track.
“The government is looking for understanding, not confrontation,” Sanchez said in televised remarks on Tuesday following a meeting where his Cabinet signed off on the pardons. “It is the moment for politics, to turn the page ...We hope to open a new era of dialogue and build new bridges.”
He said the pardons are “the best for Catalonia and for Spain.”
In the past, Sanchez rejected the idea of pardons, likely because he was fending off challengers on the right. Catalonia's independence drive is loathed by Spain's right wing, who see national unity as fundamental.
His about-face was painted as hypocritical by Pablo Casado, the head of the conservative Popular Party. He accused Sanchez of “lying to Spaniards” during an election debate in 2019.
“Several times I asked Sanchez in the 2019 debate if he was going to pardon the prisoners for sedition and make a pact with them. And he denied it,” Casado said. “He lied to the Spanish and will have to answer at the polls.”
Isabel Diaz Ayuso, the conservative mayor of Madrid and a rising star in the Popular Party, lashed out at the pardons and said Sanchez was humiliating Spain.
“His decision, far from bringing harmony, strengthens separatism and social division,” she wrote on Twitter.
Catalonia is an autonomous community under Spanish law and with Barcelona as its capital it plays a major role in Spanish life and economy.
Spain's political landscape has been deeply scarred since it was shocked by the events surrounding an unlawful unilateral Catalan independence referendum on Oct. 1, 2017. The then-right-wing government sent in busloads of riot police who attacked voters, broke into polling stations and destroyed ballots. The referendum had been declared illegal by Spanish courts.
Following the referendum, Catalonia's government declared the region of 7.5 million people independent. Shortly afterwards, the Spanish government dissolved the Catalan parliament, reinstated control over Catalonia and arrested thousands of people, including top political leaders.
Five other leaders, including Catalonia's former president, Carles Puigdemont, fled into exile to avoid arrest. Tuesday's pardons do not cover those in exile. Puigdemont is fighting extradition to Spain while serving as an outspoken pro-Catalan member of the European Parliament in Brussels. The exiles are demanding exoneration and fear they will be arrested if they return to Spain.
Nine Catalan leaders were found guilty at a trial in 2019 of sedition and other charges. They were sentenced to between nine and 13 years in prison.
Among those convicted, and now pardoned, are Oriol Junqueras, the former deputy leader of Catalonia; Raul Romeva, who had been in charge of foreign affairs for the former Catalan government; Jordi Sanchez, who headed a pro-independence group; and Jordi Cuixart, the president of Omnium Cultural, a Barcelona-based cultural organization. They have been in prison for about three and a half years, ever since their arrests after the 2017 referendum.
However, the pardons are only partial. Sanchez did not lift court-imposed bans forbidding them from running for public office and the commutations can be revoked if they are found to be once again illegally seeking to get Catalonia to break away from Spain.
“These pardons do not depend on their recipients renouncing their ideas, and nor do we expect them to do so,” Sanchez said. “But these people were never put in prison for the ideas they hold, but rather for having violated the laws of our democracy.”
A large segment of Catalans have long advocated for independence, seeing themselves as culturally very different from Castilian Spain and suffering at the hands of the central government in Madrid. Still, even in Catalonia opinions over independence are deeply split and it is uncertain if a majority would vote to split away from Spain should a proper referendum be held, as Catalan leaders are demanding.
There are likely political considerations behind the pardons, because Sanchez's minority left-wing government relies on the votes of Catalan parties to pass legislation and the budget in the national parliament.
There are political risks too – huge ones. Polls suggest about 60% of Spaniards oppose the pardons, exposing Sanchez to furious attacks from his political rivals on the right. Those parties have vowed to seek to stop the pardons through legal appeals, though that option seems destined to fail. Spain's king still needs to approve the pardons too, though not doing so would cause a constitutional crisis.
Spanish governments have the power to issue pardons – as they have done numerous times since Spain became a democracy in the late 1970s following the end of the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco. The list of those pardoned includes several corrupt politicians, military general Alfonso Armada, who was convicted of trying to orchestrate a military coup in 1981, and members of Basque and Marxist terrorist groups.
How effective the commutations will be in calming tensions is hard to predict.
Pere Aragones, the new Catalan president, called the pardons a “first but insufficient step” to resume talks between Catalonia and the Spanish government over the future of the region. Aragones said Spain needs to grant Catalonia the chance to hold a lawfully binding referendum on independence.
He also demanded that the Spanish government issue an amnesty for all those prosecuted during the massive protests in 2017. Roughly 3,000 people would be affected by such an amnesty.
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.
Follow Cain Burdeau on Twitter
Follow @cainburdeau
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
