Sánchez prepares for fraught second term after Catalan deal infuriates opponents

Pedro Sánchez is preparing for a fraught and turbulent second term as Spain’s prime minister after his socialist party regained power by agreeing to a deeply controversial amnesty for Catalan separatists that has infuriated rightwing parties and led to huge protests across the country.

- Sam Jones

The investiture vote on Thursday came almost four months after an inconclusive snap election in July in which Sánchez’s governing Spanish Socialist Workers party (PSOE), was narrowly defeated by its conservative rivals in the People’s party (PP).

Sánchez won an absolute majority in Thursday’s vote, securing the support of 179 of Spain’s 350 MPs after a bad-tempered and bitter debate. Although the PSOE hailed the result as proof that “democracy will always prevail over noise and darkness”, its victory has come at a high price and has depended on the backing of smaller regional parties, including Catalan and Basque nationalists.

The PP, despite finishing first in July’s election, proved unable to form a government with the support of the far-right Vox party and other smaller groupings.

Sánchez and his partners in the leftwing Sumar alliance, however, managed to cobble together the necessary backing for their coalition by acceding to the amnesty demands of the two main Catalan pro-independence parties – the pragmatic Catalan Republican Left (ERC) and the hardline Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia).

A draft law, tabled by the PSOE on Monday, will offer an amnesty to hundreds of people involved in efforts to bring about Catalan independence over the last decade.

Sánchez’s manoeuvring – and the fact that he had ruled out such an amnesty during the election campaign – has prompted fury from the PP and Vox, which have accused him of hypocrisy, caving into the separatists and putting self-preservation before the national interest.