Amnesty Jeers And Gibes For Pedro Sanchez

HAD there been a general election on October 9, Spain’s Right could probably have formed a government.

The results of a 40dB poll for El Pais and the Cadena SER broadcaster gave the Partido Popular (PP), headed by Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, 144 seats in the national parliament, compared with the 137 obtained July 23.

Vox, whose support for the PP is guaranteed, would have 30 seats compared with 33 on July 23, while votes from Coalicion Canaria (CC) and Union de Pueblo de Navarra (UPN), which 40dB predicted should again win one seat apiece, would give Feijoo the 176 seats needed for an overall majority in Spain’s parliament.

The poll was carried out immediately after Feijoo’s failed investiture vote and suggests that the amnesty controversy is influencing voting intentions.

Catalan politicians who remained in Spain following a botched, illegal referendum and a short-lived Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in October 2017 received prison sentences ranging from nine to 13 years.  Pardons from Pedro Sanchez’s PSOE-UP coalition government in June 2022 might have eased the situation inside Cataluña but did not meet with unanimous approval outside the region.

Sixteen months later, Sanchez is negotiating with all the nationalist parties – except CC and UPN – whose combined votes would give him the 176 investiture votes and keep him in the Moncloa Palace.

Those parties include Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) and Junts per Catalunya, both of whom want an amnesty for the pardoned politicians, plus all those prosecuted in the region’s independence process.

ERC is less demanding but Junts plays hard to get and meanwhile the 40dB survey suggests that, like the pardons, the amnesty is far less popular outside Cataluña than Sanchez would like.

Nor is it unanimously popular inside Cataluña, as an anti-amnesty rally organised by the Societat Civil Catalana on October 8 in Barcelona demonstrated by drawing a crowd of tens of thousands.

On October 12, Spain’s National Day, Pedro Sanchez has for the last five years been received with boos and catcalls from onlookers during the traditional Armed Forces parade in Madrid presided by the King and Queen.

This year was not going to be different, and in fact it was worse.

Sanchez reached the tribune in the capital’s Plaza Neptuno just three minutes before King Felipe, Queen Letizia and Princess Leonor.  Although the public address system forbore to announce his arrival, and although he was located 150 metres away from the public, Sanchez still got the bird before the royal family appeared and the insults turned to cheers.

But as the monarchs greeted the incumbent president, the perennial “¡Qué te vote Txapote” taunt rang out  This anti-Sanchez gibe refers to ETA terrorist Francisco Javier García Gaztelus, “Txapote” and the support the PSOE-UP government has received from the now-extinguished Basque group’s political arm, Bildu.

The parade over, the taunts were heard again, louder this time and alternating with “fuera, fuera” (out, out).

As government spokeswoman Isabel Rodriguez pointed out, the public habitually greets every socialist president attending the National Day parade with catcalls, boos and insults.

This year was different because Sanchez’s permanence as president of Spain’s government depends on a measure – the amnesty – that a great number of voters find hard to accept.

And should Sanchez’s negotiations with Junts go awry, there will be another general election.  And this time the results could be far less favourable for him than July 23’s.