Sánchez has agreed to transfer immigration policy to Catalonia because Puigdemont’s party, Junts, demanded he do so at the last minute for their seven MPs in Madrid to support his new ecomomic measures. They abstained and the bill passed, just. El Mundo reports this morning that they did the deal with six minutes left on the parliamentary clock. The Catalan separatists argue that the Constitution (Article 150.2) allows the national government to hand over that policy power to a Spanish region via a special law just for that region, if it sees fit do so. The Prime Minister obviously agrees, at least this week. A few years ago, though, during and after the separatist crisis in 2017, Sánchez thought they were “the Spanish Le Pen” and comments by the then separatist First Minister, Quim Torra, “racist and xenophobic”. That is revelant, of course, because we are now, suddenly, talking about immigration policy, not fisheries or wall building. Or maybe immigration policy leads to some new kind of nationalist populist wall building, as Puigdemont keeps piling on the pressure and the amnesty bill itself goes through parliament. Immigration policy has just been ceded to national populist separatists who have demonstrated they are willing to force the rule of law past its legal limits and want to do it all again, and in a national and global context that is seeing the rise of the alt- or hard- or far-right. Unless it is stopped by the courts at some stage, and given their track record over the past decade, in matters of identity and matters of the law, how will the regional Catalan (separatist) government now proceed to define who is in and who is out, who is us and who is them? “What could possibly go wrong by ceding immigration policy to some xenophobes”, wondered the Madrid First Minister, Ayuso (PP), this morning.
"the Catalan separatists argue that the Constitution (Article 150.2) allows the national government to hand over that policy power to a Spanish region via a special law just for that region,...."
Seems that no one is challenging this interpretation of that Article. Another nail in the coffin of this arranged marriage of convenience. What else Sanchez will have to acceed to in order to cling on, only time will tell.
"the Catalan separatists argue that the Constitution (Article 150.2) allows the national government to hand over that policy power to a Spanish region via a special law just for that region,...."
Seems that no one is challenging this interpretation of that Article. Another nail in the coffin of this arranged marriage of convenience. What else Sanchez will have to acceed to in order to cling on, only time will tell.