Spain’s far right protests against ind …

Thousands of Spaniards summoned by the right and far right opposition they demonstrated this Sunday in Madrid against President Pedro Sánchez’s intention to pardon the Catalan leaders condemned for the failure of the 2017 secession attempt.

Between flags of Spain, some 126,000 people according to the municipal police, demonstrated in the central square of Colón, the same where thousands of people gathered in February 2019, two days before the start of the independence trial.

On the opposition side were the leader of the Conservative Popular Party (PP), Pablo Casado, and the far right leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal. “I ask Pedro Sánchez to take note, because he will forgive them, but the Spaniards are not going to forgive him “said José Luis Martínez Almeida, mayor of Madrid and spokesperson for the PP, which has collected signatures against this initiative.

Everything indicates that the graces will arrive before August. Conservatives see it as a decision motivated by the government’s need to add political consensus in a coalition of Socialists and Podemos, a minority in parliament and dependent on Catalan separatism.

“I ask you to have confidence. I ask for your understanding and your magnanimity because the challenge that awaits us, to sow coexistence, is worth it”, said this week.

Of the 12 convicted, nine are serving sentences ranging from nine to 13 years in prison. Among them is Oriol Junqueras, leader of the Left Separatist Republican Party (ERC), a key ally of the Spanish government in Congress.

With a letter sent to local media, Junqueras gave Sánchez’s executive a break by showing support for pardons – which he looked down upon at first – and self-criticizing the 2017 secessionist attempt.

“We must be aware that our response was not understood as fully legitimate by part of the society”wrote Junqueras, thus renouncing the unilateral route and advocating a referendum agreed with Madrid, which the government rejects because it considers it contrary to the Constitution.

The most radical wing of the independence movement – where is the party of the former regional president Carles Puigdemont, who fled to Belgium, however, does not renounce the unilateral path and is inflexible in his request for amnesty for those condemned, a position that the government is not considering.

Unlike the protest of the right in 2019, when Casado, the president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, and then leader of the liberals of Ciudadanos, Albert Rivera, posed in a joint photo, this time no one wanted to repeat the image .

With Rivera out of politics and Casado struggling not to be overshadowed by Vox or the push from Madrid regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso, there was no picture today.