Pro-independence Junts' members back deal with Socialists with 86% in favor

Members of the Catalan pro-independence Junts party have backed the deal with the Socialists by a landslide, as 86.16% of the voters were in favor, as the party announced on Sunday evening. 

The vote ratifies the deal announced on Thursday from Brussels by former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, head of the post-election talks negotiations in the party, and Socialist organization secretary Santos Cerdán. 

"We now start an unexplored era, an era that we will need to explore and take advantage of," Puigdemont said. 

"This is a term agreement, not for just the prime ministerial bid," Santos Cerdán said during a press conference hours before Puigdemont spoke. 

The deal will back Pedro Sánchez's government during the four-year term only if the deals are met. 

The question that Junts posed to party members read: "Do you ratify the deal signed in Brussels between Junts per Catalunya and the PSOE in which conditions and mecanisms for the solution of the political conflict between Catalonia and Spain are set and where we will propose a referendum on self-determination?"  

The results of the vote showed 86.16% in favor, 13.84% against and 0.01% blank. Around 67% of the members eligible to vote have done so. 

Independence push and lawfare 

The support of the Catalan pro-independence party to reelect Sánchez, however, was in exchange to some requests, such as a more specific amnesty law regarding all those judicial cases related to the independence push of the last decade.  

The Socialists had already negotiated an amnesty law with Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya. However, Junts considered that the amnesty text signed with the other party was insufficient and demanded that the future law also include cases not directly related to the 2017 independence push, which they consider "lawfare.” 

The new text will include citizens and those responsible "before and after the 2014 non-binding self-determination referendum and from the 2017 vote that have been prosecuted or are in judicial processes linked to these events," as the text reads. 

All those people going from 2012 to 2023 could "be eligible for this amnesty law," Cerdán said before adding that "no specific names were agreed, that will only depend on the judges." 

The text, which is still not public but has prompted thousands to demonstrate against it in Madrid and in Barcelona during the last few days, as well as the European Commission asking for more detailed information, is expected to be put forward in Congress on Monday. 

Cyberattack 

Late on Saturday night, Junts made public a cyberattack as they received 70,000 scheduled impacts from "different countries." 

The attack "was neutralized," and they filed a complaint with the Catalan cybersecurity agency. 

The statement also explained that "the attack did not affect the voting of the deal with the Socialists as it was hosted on other servers, which continue to work as normal."