Catalan amnesty deal comes at huge 'cost': Spanish PM faces 'extremely tough battle' ahead to govern
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00:00 Well let's get some more analysis on what's been happening in Spain. We can cross to Brussels and
00:03 speak to political analyst Carlos Mascaril-Villar. Thank you very much indeed for taking the time to
00:08 speak to us. First of all let's talk about those protests in Madrid today outside the Parliament.
00:15 There were also some other protests earlier in the week. What's got people so angry?
00:18 Well as you know the territorial question in Spain has been running for a long time.
00:26 There is a bunch of the Spanish society which thinks that we need to be equal in front of law.
00:33 And as you know there was an illegal referendum and there were lots of things that according to
00:38 certain part of the Spanish society were not accomplishing with the law. So of course people
00:44 or a certain part of the Spanish society is pretty angry with the amnesty deal. So basically they
00:49 think that the Spain or the state or the new government should have never accepted an amnesty
00:55 deal in order to remain in power. That's basically the main reason. And what sort of a price does
01:00 that deal with the separatists from Catalonia actually come at? What's Pedro Sánchez going
01:07 to have to do to return the favour? Yeah that's a pretty complex question. I mean the next four
01:15 years are going to be pretty tough, pretty polarised. We would have the Conservative and
01:20 the extreme right trying to be extremely tough with the new government and the new Prime Minister
01:27 Pedro Sánchez will have to negotiate every law with the separatist Catalan parties mainly
01:34 and also the Basque country. So of course this would mean that it would be hard for them
01:40 politically and it will have a cost in the long term probably for them as well. So it's going to
01:48 be a very tough battle for them during the next four years. The other element which is pretty
01:54 important as well is that now we have the amnesty but at some point the Catalan pro-separatist
01:59 parties will ask for something else because the final end of all this process is to come up with
02:06 a sort of political solution to the conflict which might result in a referendum or a new
02:12 regional constitutional law for the Catalans and for the Basque country. So it's going to be
02:18 extremely tough for Mr Sánchez. I mean did he have any choice? I mean were there
02:24 all alternatives to this scheme of reaching out to the regional parties and building a
02:30 coalition with them because I mean the numbers didn't stack up for anybody else either did they?
02:34 Yeah that's correct. So it was pretty tough, the numbers, the arithmetics were how they were and if
02:42 you look at the current parliament you have the conservative with the extreme right and the
02:48 socialist with all the regionalist and pro-separatist parties from different regions in Spain. So the
02:55 only solution was new elections but nobody could tell if the result would have been the same.
03:01 We had in the past already the same situation and the result was relatively similar to the previous
03:07 ones. Another solution would have been that the socialists would have abstained to have a minority
03:14 government of the conservatives without the far right but of course that would have meant that
03:19 they won't be in power right now. And just looking back at these years of Pedro Sánchez rule, I
03:26 believe he came to power in 2018. Obviously he's had lots to deal with, notably a pandemic, but
03:33 what's the overall feeling about how his premiership has delivered for Spain?
03:39 I think that's a very good question and actually in general if you look at the macroeconomic
03:47 results of the last years of Mr Sánchez in office, the results are pretty good. If you see
03:55 how the economy is working currently, Spain is at the top in Europe in terms of economic growth,
04:02 also it has been dealing pretty well with the pandemic as well, also with the energy crisis
04:08 as a result of the war in Ukraine because we are sort of isolated from the rest of Europe.
04:14 So generally speaking I think people are happy about the management of Mr Sánchez in office.
04:23 So I think that part of the Spanish society has accepted the amnesty as well as a result of
04:32 his good job in other areas and his promises for the future.
04:36 Okay, we'll see how he gets on through to the year 2027. Thank you very much indeed for taking
04:43 the time to speak to us, Carlos Mascaral-Villar. Thank you very much indeed.