Spain’s parliament passes amnesty for Catalan separatists after region’s leader calls snap election

The approval of the contentious amnesty law comes a day after Catalonia's president Pere Aragones called for a snap election in May.

Transcript

00:00 "Spain's parliament has passed a controversial and nasty law. It pardons hundreds of leaders

00:07 and supporters of the Catalan separatist movement. Those involved in the region's unsuccessful

00:13 attempt to declare independence from Spain in 2017 are included. The bill proposed by

00:20 socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez has angered many Spaniards."

00:30 "The main message that both will convey is that amnesty is only an intermediate stage,

00:37 that they will not settle for it and that it has simply been a means to achieve their

00:52 main claims, which is mainly self-determination."

00:56 The amnesty was approved 178 in favour, against 172 in the lower house of Spain's parliament.

01:03 Courts will apply the law on a case by case basis.

01:16 "I believe that the supreme court can go ahead investigating, because it has been admitted

01:20 to trial by most of the members of the court's penal room, the terrorist act of Puigdemont."

01:27 "While Catalan parties are fighting to get the hegemony of the sovereign, Pedro Sánchez

01:33 expects that the division of the independentist movement benefits its candidate, who has been

01:37 the maximum beneficiary of the strategy of reconciliation deployed by the president

01:42 of the government in Catalonia. Pedro Sánchez has paused the negotiation of the budgets

01:47 waiting for the electoral results of May 12. Nationalism is played by the generalitat

01:53 of Catalonia and whatever the result, the elections will have unpredictable consequences

01:58 in the future of the government of Spain. In Madrid, Jaime Velázquez, Euronews."

02:03 (whooshing)

02:05 [BLANK_AUDIO]