Shorouk Express 
Spain’s minority leftist government on Tuesday approved measures aimed at winning back Catalan separatists whose withdrawal of support threatens its survival.
Junts per Catalunya, led by exiled separatist figurehead Carles Puigdemont, proved decisive when its votes allowed Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to serve another term after inconclusive 2023 elections produced a hung parliament.
After backing the Socialist-led coalition on a case-by-case basis, the pro-business Junts withdrew its support in October, accusing the government of breaking its pledges.
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Acknowledging the break represented a “political crisis”, Sánchez told public television he “accepted responsibility for those failures to follow through” but stressed his “desire to fulfil” the promises.
Cabinet would approve reforms affecting local government spending and the digitalisation of company accounts, which Sánchez said Junts “had already proposed to us months ago”.
A key sticking point is an amnesty law for those prosecuted in the northeastern Catalonia region’s failed 2017 secession bid, Spain’s worst political crisis in decades.
Although MPs approved the law last year, it does not apply to Puigdemont because he faces embezzlement charges that do not come under its scope, preventing his return to Spain from exile in Belgium.
Sánchez said he hoped Puigdemont, who led Catalonia’s regional government during the secession crisis, could “return soon” and remained open to meeting him in the future.
The crisis with Junts compounds difficulties linked to separate corruption investigations into Sánchez’s wife, brother and former Socialist heavyweights that have dogged the government.
One of the Socialist suspects, former transport minister Jose Luis Abalos, implied in an interview with El Mundo daily that Sánchez’s wife Begoña Gómez irregularly intervened in the bailout of airline Air Europa during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sánchez, who has always defended his wife’s innocence, told a separate interview with RAC1 radio on Tuesday that he would never accept “threats” or “blackmail” from individuals or the right-wing opposition, which demands his resignation and early elections.
