OVIEDO, Spain

The Spanish government is submitting a bill to parliament on Friday to drop the sedition law from the penal code and swap it for a lesser offense called “aggravated public disorder.”


In Spain, the crime of sedition carries penalties of up to 15 years in prison. The new offense to replace it would drop the maximum sentence to five years.


In 2019, several leaders of the Catalan independence movement were charged with sedition and sentenced to as many as 13 years behind bars for trying to separate from Spain in 2017.

Other leaders involved in the breakaway attempt, including former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont, remain in exile and continue facing sedition charges in Spain.


Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in an interview with broadcaster La Sexta that his progressive government has made a series of controversial decisions that have “eased tensions” with Catalonia and helped “overcome” the 2017 political crisis.


He also pointed out that Spain’s sedition law was written in 1822 and that the country is “taking a step forward in terms of becoming more like other European democracies.”


In Barcelona, separatist Catalan President Pere Aragones celebrated the proposed legal reform, saying it is “an indispensable step towards dejudicializing” politics with Catalonia and will make it “harder to persecute the independence movement unjustly.”


However, he still calls for total amnesty for crimes related to the 2017 referendum.


Spain’s top conservative party, on the other hand, accused Sanchez of betraying Spain.

Popular Party leader Alberto Feijoo said the prime minister is putting “his political interests above Spain,” called the move “a historic irresponsibility” and warned that the “separatists will never, ever, be satisfied.”


Before presenting the bill in parliament, Socialist politician Patxi Lopez pushed back on the criticism, explaining that the reformed law will make it easier to extradite politicians in exile.


“Since the crime of sedition does not exist in the countries around us, judicial collaboration with those countries was not possible… which impeded the extraditions,” he said. “That won’t happen anymore, and there will be no more sanctuaries for crimes against the public order.”


Former Catalan leader Puigdemont, who is exiled in Brussels and has avoided extradition, did not celebrate the news.


He said that Sanchez is “a master in the art of deception” and that Spain will continue “criminalizing the right” to an independence referendum.


The deputy leader of Spain’s far-right party Vox took rhetoric against Sanchez even further.


“As soon as we enter the government of Spain, the first thing we will do is reform the crime of high treason and put you on the bench for collaborating with coup plotters,” Javier Ortega Smith said on Twitter, in reference to the Spanish prime minister.


The new law still needs to pass through a parliamentary and legal process to become official. But Lopez said the minority coalition government expects to find majority support for the bill.