About 170,000 people demonstrate in capital over socialist party leader’s deal enabling second term in office
About 170,000 people have gathered in central Madrid for another large protest against the controversial Catalan amnesty law that has allowed the country’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, to secure a second term in office.
Sánchez was sworn in on Friday after winning an investiture vote the previous day that came almost four months after July’s inconclusive snap general election. Although the conservative People’s party (PP) narrowly beat Sánchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) in the election, it was unable to secure the parliamentary support to form a government even with the backing of the far-right Vox party and other smaller groupings.
However, the PSOE and its partners in the leftwing Sumar alliance managed to cobble together the necessary votes by enlisting the support of the two main Catalan pro-independence parties in return for offering an amnesty for those involved in the unsuccessful, unilateral push to secede from Spain six years ago.
Sánchez’s decision to agree to the proposed amnesty – which he had opposed in the run-up to the election – has infuriated his political opponents, who have accused him of hypocrisy, cynical manoeuvring and putting his own political survival before the country’s interests.
