MADRID (AP) — Acting Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez signed an agreement Friday with a small Basque party that ensures him enough parliamentary support to be reelected, possibly next week.
The deal between Sánchez´s Socialist party and the Basque Nationalist Party means that Sánchez should be able to count on the support of 178 legislators, two more than the majority he needs in the 350-seat Parliament to be chosen as the next prime minister. Sánchez has been in office since 2018.
On Thursday, the Socialists clinched the support in Parliament of a fringe Catalan separatist party led by fugitive former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont in exchange for an amnesty for potentially thousands of people involved in the region’s failed secession bid.
Details of an amnesty bill have yet to be released but it stands to benefit Puigdemont and scores of others, from minor government officials to ordinary citizens, who ran into legal trouble for their roles in Catalonia’s illegal secession attempt that brought Spain to the brink of rupture six years ago.
Spain’s courts are still trying to have Puigdemont extradited from…
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