Tens of thousands flood Spanish capital to protest controversial Catalan amnesty law

Some 170,000 people flooded into Spain’s capital city of Madrid on Saturday to protest the controversial Catalan amnesty law that the country’s Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez pushed through in a bid to stay in power.

Sanchez agreed to the amnesty in exchange for the backing of Catalan and Basque nationalist parties. It will cover about 400 people involved in the independence bid that came to a head in 2017.

The independence referendum was declared illegal by the courts and resulted in Spain’s worst political crisis in decades.

The amnesty would be Spain’s largest since the 1977 blanket amnesty for crimes committed during the Francisco Franco dictatorship and the first approved in the European Union since 1991, according to Spain’s national research council.

For more info, please go to https://globalnews.ca
Subscribe to Global News Channel HERE: http://bit.ly/20fcXDc
Like Global News on Facebook HERE: http://bit.ly/255GMJQ
Follow Global News on Twitter HERE: http://bit.ly/1Toz8mt
Follow Global News on Instagram HERE: https://bit.ly/2QZaZIB
#GlobalNews #spain #protest