MADRID- Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Catalan ally Junts decided on Monday to “unanimously break relations” with the ruling Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) over “unfulfilled promises” made in exchange for backing the Spanish premier’s re-election in 2023.
During a party meeting in Perpignan, France, Junts President Carles Puigdemont announced the rupture with Sánchez’s party over their “failure” to transfer migration, border, and tax powers to Catalonia, include Catalan among the EU’s official languages, and, most notably, fully apply a controversial amnesty law to embezzlement charges upheld against the self-exiled Catalan leader.
Spain’s Supreme Court has issued an arrest warrant against Puigdemont, who lives in Waterloo, Belgium, over the alleged misuse of €1.6 million in public funds to finance a failed 2017 Catalan independence referendum.
Puigdemont has repeatedly appealed the court’s decision, which determined that the amnesty law, which pardons those involved in the Catalan independence movement between 2012 and 2023, does not cover embezzlement charges.
Sánchez’s government pushed through the amnesty law last year in exchange for political support from Junts, seven of whose MPs now underpin the fragile coalition government.
Puigdemont will explain this afternoon at a press conference how the break will take place if he obtains the support of the party membership, which is widely expected to back his move. Also, the separatist leader will announce whether his party would back a no-confidence vote against Sánchez’s minority government together with the conservative opposition Popular Party and the far-right VOX.
The Junts party’s members will vote Wednesday and Thursday on whether to support the proposed break with the Socialist-led government.
This is a developing story
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