The High Price of Pedro Sánchez’s Power Play

When political expediency dictates the rule of law, principles become surprisingly flexible. In Madrid, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has spent years proving that no legal precedent is too sacred to trade for parliamentary votes. Now, the logical conclusion of his transactional governance has arrived: Carles Puigdemont, the former Catalan president who orchestrated an unconstitutional referendum in 2017 before fleeing the country, can return to Spain a free man.

The Spanish Constitutional Court has ruled that a contentious amnesty law applies even to the embezzlement charges hanging over the fugitive politician. Promptly following the judgment, the Supreme Court lifted Puigdemont’s longstanding arrest warrant. For seven years, the self-proclaimed martyr of Catalan independence enjoyed a comfortable self-imposed exile in Belgium, an over-bureaucratic haven remarkably adept at shielding foreign politicians from legal consequences while Madrid’s judicial machinery stalled.

The path to this moment was forged not out of grand national reconciliation, but out of raw political survival. In 2023, Sánchez salvaged his fragile socialist administration by striking a bargain with Puigdemont’s party, Junts. In exchange for the parliamentary votes required to keep his progressive government in office, Sánchez promised amnesty. At the time, the prime minister framed this horse-trading as a noble effort to promote harmony. Following the court’s ruling, Sánchez reiterated his stance, claiming that the important message is that of coexistence among Catalans, while insisting he had no regrets.

Yet, the socialist experiment in Madrid has yielded predictable instability rather than political harmony. Sánchez’s reliance on hardline separatists was always a high-stakes gamble. Predictably, Junts abandoned the minority coalition when it suited their interests. Just recently, the separatists joined forces with the opposition to defeat the government’s emergency housing measures—a desperate intervention typical of Spain’s misguided economic approach—forcing Sánchez to call a snap election for November.

Sánchez traded the integrity of the legal system for a few extra months in office, only to end up right back where he started: facing an electorate exhausted by economic stagnation and partisan maneuvers. Meanwhile, separatism has lost much of its public momentum, leaving Junts trailing in opinion polls. Should the conservative People’s Party win the upcoming election as projected, they may well find themselves navigating the same fragmented parliament. Sánchez’s amnesty did not heal Catalonia; it merely demonstrated how easily a state’s legal apparatus can be bent to serve the survival of a failing government.

Written by Thorben Thiede thorben.thiede@alpineweekly.com