How Catalan separatists are taking control of immigration

In Spain’s general election last July, the right-wing Partido Popular and the even more right-wing Vox won 170 seats, just short of the 176 they needed to form a government. The support of an MP from Navarre and another from the Canary Islands took them to 172 but that only added to the frustrating sense of ‘so near and yet so far’.  

Then Pedro Sánchez, the incumbent left-wing prime minister, stepped in, cobbled together an alliance with six other parties and, with 179 votes, was duly re-elected. Promising that he would lead a stable, transparent and, above all, ‘progressive’ administration, Sánchez boasted that he had halted the advance of the ‘far-right’ (meaning Vox) in Spain, thereby kick-starting the fight back against ‘right-wing extremism’ in the European Union.

The problem, however, is that amongst Sánchez’s new allies is Junts per Catalunya, the radical Catalan separatist party.