Feijóo Urges Sánchez to Sign Key Agreement Amidst Independence and Amnesty Debate

Feijóo Urges Sánchez to “Rethink” and Sign Agreement with PP: “No Need to Choose Between Puigdemont’s Blackmail or Elections”

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the Partido Popular (PP) and candidate for investiture, has once again called on Pedro Sánchez to “rethink” and sign the agreement proposed by the PP two weeks ago to “defuse” the independence movement and avoid snap elections. The leader of the PP extends his hand to the Secretary-General of the PSOE just one day after the fugitive former Catalan president confirmed that amnesty is part of the price that Junts will demand for their support. “We don’t have to choose between Puigdemont’s blackmail or elections,” Feijóo stated. He will attempt to meet with Sánchez before the investiture to once again offer what is seen as the “third way”: a PP government for two years with six State pacts.

With twenty days to go before the investiture debate, the PP president has reaffirmed the document, which Sánchez rejected and to which Vox would not object. This document includes “constitutional pacts among the constitutionalist parties.” Because, according to Feijóo, “the majority” of Spaniards voted on June 23 “in favor of reconciliation among Spaniards,” and “only 6% of voters supported independence.” That is why Feijóo has refused to meet with Junts and accept their demands.

“I cannot accept a Spain in which the principle of equality is broken and where the law is not enforced; I cannot accept that Spanish democracy is the same as a dictatorship and that amnesty for crimes that undermine democracy is allowed. I cannot fund the independence movement because it has not succeeded in the polls but is at its lowest point,” he said from the Canary Islands, where he met with the President of the island’s government, Fernando Clavijo.

The PP leader acknowledges the “territorial problem” in Catalonia but calls on Sánchez and other parties to address it within the framework of the law. “I know that we must find a solution to Catalonia’s territorial problem, but that will either be a State pact or it won’t happen. And it will be done in accordance with the law and within the constitutional framework, or it won’t happen.” Furthermore, the PP’s Secretary-General, Cuca Gamarra, pointed out that in 2021, the legal experts of the Congress rejected the amnesty law as unconstitutional, and at that time, the PSOE also agreed that the amnesty was “clearly unconstitutional.”

In addition, the leader of the PP has once again called for the dismissal of Vice President Yolanda Díaz for her visit to a fugitive from justice last Monday. “If Sánchez does not remove Ms. Díaz, Mr. Sánchez is an accomplice to this disgrace,” he pressured on Monday, the same day that the leader of Sumar also met with Puigdemont.