Spain’s Pedro Sanchez reelected Prime Minister

Madrid: Spain’s acting Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, was reelected by a majority of legislators in a parliamentary vote Thursday, allowing him to form a new minority leftist coalition government.

Sanchez was backed by 179 lawmakers in the 350-seat lower house of parliament. Only right-wing opposition deputies voted against him.

The vote came after nearly two days of debate among party leaders that centred almost entirely on a highly controversial amnesty deal for Catalonia’s separatists that Sanchez agreed to in return for vital support to get elected prime minister again.

Sanchez won the vote after clinching the support of six smaller parties including two Catalan separatist parties in recent weeks, allowing him to achieve the majority of lawmakers needed to be reelected and form another minority coalition government with the left-wing Sumar (Joining Forces) party.

Spain’s inconclusive national elections on July 23 left a highly fractured parliament. The centre-right Popular Party received the most votes in the elections but failed to get enough support to form a government because of its alliances with the far-right Vox party, which finished third.

The Socialists finished second with 121 seats. It remains to be seen if Sanchez can maintain enough support to last the next four years.

The amnesty deal that Sanchez’s Socialists signed with two key Catalan separatist parties that command 14 votes would clean the slate for hundreds of Catalan separatists in legal trouble following the northeast region’s illegal 2017 secession bid that sparked Spain’s biggest

crisis in decades.