Spanish MPs give final approval to amnesty law for Catalonia’s separatists

Ex-regional president Carles Puigdemont among high-profile beneficiaries after MPs approve law by 177 votes to 172

Spanish MPs have given their final approval to the deeply divisive amnesty law that the country's socialist prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, offered Catalan separatists in return for helping him back to power after last year's inconclusive general election.

The new law, approved by 177 votes to 172 in Spain's 350-seat congress of deputies, will apply to about 400 people involved in the symbolic independence referendum of November 2014 and the illegal unilateral poll that followed three years later, which triggered Spain's worst political crisis in four decades.