The international financial press criticizes the decision adopted by the Socialist Party to keep Pedro Sánchez in the Government for four more years. The agreement reached with Junts on the amnesty and economic transfers (such as the transfer of taxation to Catalonia, still unspecified) could lead Spain to an institutional crisis in the coming months, in addition to giving wings to the separatist movement that had faded from the map.
“Do you remember last summer when everyone feared that the Spanish far-right could obtain a good electoral result and endanger Spain and its future within the European Union? Well, it is beginning to seem that the alternative is worse”. This is how the newspaper starts its editorial this Friday The Wall Street Journalone of the international references in paper salmonwhich maintains that Sánchez is “playing with separatism” (“the primer minister toys with separatism“) and could turn out to be a dangerous experiment. According to the editorial, the list of those granted amnesty by this agreement could “far exceed 1,000 people”, which means paying “a high price” for the support of the separatists. And there is a another relevant issue. The European Union is not exempt from independence movements that affect different countries and “the haggling of a left-wing party within a rule of law,” maintains the WSJcan be interpreted in Europe as “a learning moment” about “separatist machinations” and how far they are capable of going.
Al Financial Timeswho at the beginning of the week spoke out in favor of the pact with Junts, does not escape, however, the fact that “This pact could open a new chapter of resentment and potentially explosive for Spanish politics” taking into account that his opponents accuse him of being “destroying the judicial system” of the country. And it collects, like the rest of the international media, the protests of the right and extreme right of the country who, it says, are “outraged” at “the acquittal of hundreds of people with crimes related to a failed and illegal attempt at independence of Catalonia , which caused Spain’s worst political crisis in decades six years ago”, in reference to the illegal referendum of October 1, 2017.
On the other hand, there is a concept that is repeated in the international financial press (it is not new) which is the fact that This pact once again encourages the independence spirit when the aguas They seemed much calmer than after the incidents of 1-O. “There is a risk that Sánchez will revive the moribund independence movement, which could lead Spain to an institutional crisis or even worse, and deepen the ideological divisions that have regularly paralyzed the country since 2017.” It is a paragraph extracted from the chronicle made by the agency’s correspondent in Spain Bloombergwhich dedicates a good part of the text to explaining the violent protests of recent days and the different reactions, also that of the organizations of judges and prosecutors, and emphasizes that the conservatives have had “a visceral response” when describing the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont as a “traitor and criminal.”
From France, the newspaper salmon Les Echos understands that, “beyond the content of the agreement”, What has really angered the opposition and the citizens “in exchange for a few votes” is “the way of carrying out the negotiations, in an opaque manner (…) Public opinion has misunderstood the maneuver, while the pro-independence base, which has lost strength, is outraged by a series of concessions without a commitment to loyalty.” Likewise, the French newspaper understands that Sánchez has lost the trust of his own left-wing voters and that “it will take him time to regain it.
It cannot be said that the agreement reached by the Socialist Party with Junts is having an impact on the markets. Today, sales are taking place in Spanish debt, as in the rest of the European countries. The ten-year Spanish bond is trading with a yield of 3.78% on the rise, but it is still far from returning to the 4% levels seen at the end of October and light years from what investors are demanding from Italian debt. Its bond is trading at levels of 4.6%.