Members of Spain’s conservative People’s party say they are “stupefied” after their party leader announced he was in favour of granting a conditional pardon to former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont for his role in the illegal independence push in 2017.
Under the leadership of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the PP has consistently condemned Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, for offering an amnesty to Puigdemont and dozens of others involved in the independence movement in exchange for the votes of his party, Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia).
Since the amnesty was announced, the PP, along with the far-right Vox party, has organised dozens of demonstrations, several of them violent, against the plan.
There was considerable surprise, therefore, when Feijóo reportedly let slip during a meeting with Spanish journalists on Saturday that he supported giving Puigdemont a conditional pardon. While he later qualified his remarks, saying the conditions were not right at present, he said he believed “a conditional pardon” could be possible in the future.
The apparent volte-face has rocked the PP as it faces a key election in the north-west region of Galicia on Sunday, a region it has ruled for 34 of the past 43 years.
With polls showing PP losing votes to the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG), Feijóo’s associates are wondering what their leader hopes to gain from the U-turn, a policy vehemently rejected by Vox, the PP’s natural ally.
“I suppose there is some explanation for this but we don’t know what it is. Many of us are stupefied,” an unnamed regional PP president told El País newspaper.
Observers say one possible explanation is that it is a damage-limitation operation after a veiled threat from Puigdemont that he is ready to reveal what Feijóo offered him during secret talks after the election last July left Spain with a hung parliament.
“It’s a disconcerting manoeuvre,” said Pablo Simón, a political scientist at Carlos III University in Madrid. “We know there were contacts between the PP and Junts before Sánchez’s investiture but that’s all we know. It may be a damage-limitation exercise because Junts has more information”
He added: “Another hypothesis is that, with the boycott of the amnesty law, Junts sees that with them [the PP] there might be other options. In other words, it’s a way of raising the price in their negotiations with the socialists.”
On the other hand, the PP leader may wish to improve relations with Catalonia with a view to future elections. Almost every government since the transition to democracy in 1978 has depended on Basque and Catalan support in order to govern.
