“In Defense of Spain’s Catalonia Amnesty”: Omar G. Encarnación for Foreign Affairs

In order to retain his position as the head of the government, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party has promised blanket amnesty for those involved in the 2017 extrajudicial referendum on Catalan independence. The move has “set off protests across Spain,” some of them violent, writes Omar G. Encarnación, Charles Flint Kellogg Professor of Politics, for Foreign Affairs. “But the fact that Sánchez struck his deal under dubious circumstances does not mean that an amnesty for the Catalan separatists is a bad thing,” Encarnación argues. “On the contrary: despite its transactional nature, Sánchez’s amnesty deal is the most promising development in the effort to end the Catalan separatist crisis.”

Post Date: 12-19-2023