In Spain, resistance to the planned amnesty law of the re-elected socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is growing. According to authorities, 170,000 demonstrators gathered at Madrid’s Cibeles Square on Saturday. That was almost twice as many as last weekend, when a good 80,000 were counted in Madrid during protests against the planned amnesty for Catalan separatists. On Saturday, some of the demonstrators marched from the center in front of the party headquarters of the presidential party PSOE. Another group tried to protest in front of the government headquarters in Moncloa Palace and blocked a highway there.
However, the right-wing opposition continues to march separately. During the demonstration, the leader of the conservative People’s Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, avoided the leader of the right-wing populist Vox party, Santiago Abascal. Abascal, who accuses the government of wanting to establish a dictatorship, unsuccessfully called on the PP to coordinate actions against the amnesty law.
But Feijóo maintains the political distance from the right-wing populists, which he would have needed for a government majority in parliament. On Saturday he accused Sánchez of deceiving voters by ruling out an amnesty before the election. The socialist parliamentary group leader Patxi López accused the opposition of saying that their protest was actually less valid for the amnesty. Rather, she suffered a defeat in the July election that she did not want to accept.
Sánchez has not yet presented a new government
A good 50 retired military officers had previously called on their active comrades to stage a coup against the left-wing government. The signatories of a manifesto published on the Internet by the “Association of the Spanish Military” include numerous officers and generals. At the end of 2020, the retired military officers had already fantasized in a private chat about the need for a coup against the “social-communist government” of Sánchez. Otherwise we have to start “shooting 26 million sons of bitches”. This meant left-wing Spaniards.
The protests in front of the PSOE headquarters in Madrid have been going on for almost two weeks and have repeatedly escalated into violence. Greetings and other attacks on more than a hundred PSOE offices have already been reported across Spain. Right-wing extremists, neo-Nazis and supporters of the Franco dictatorship are regularly among the demonstrators. PP politicians and the Vox leadership can also be seen there.
Sánchez, who took the oath of office for his third term on Friday, has not yet presented a new government. There was a heated argument with his coalition partner Sumar over filling the five ministerial positions that the left-wing alliance is expected to receive. The previously dominant Podemos party does not want to accept that it will no longer receive a position in the new cabinet.
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