Spain’s leader mulls granting amnesty to thousands of Catalan separatists in order to stay in power

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Now Calvo hopes his conviction and those of many others will be wiped clean if Spain’s acting prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, follows through and issues a sweeping amnesty for the separatists in exchange for their movement's political parties helping him form a new government in Madrid. “I felt betrayed by the justice system, but also I thought about all the efforts that the movement had made in the fight to achieve independence that had gotten us nowhere.” Sánchez, who has granted pardons to several leaders of the movement in the past, says that the amnesty will be positive for Spain because it will further reduce tensions inside Catalonia. Sánchez and his center-left Socialist party have tried to keep as quiet as possible on the amnesty question, but the leader has acknowledged that talks are on-going with the Catalan parties, including one led by the fugitive former regional leader of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, who fled Spain for Belgium after his dream to carve out a new state in northeast Spain collapsed. but also of the people who disobeyed authorities or damaged public property and whose punishments, while not huge, have greatly complicated their lives.” Spain’s conservative party, which lost a bid to form a government last month, is already bashing Sánchez for what it describes as selling Spain out to stay in power.