Congress, Spain’s lower house, has approved a non-binding proposal in favour of recognising Palestine as an independent state, the third European country to do so after the United Kingdom and Ireland.
The final text of the proposal “urges the government to recognize Palestine as a state.” Although the votes in Spain, the UK and Ireland are non-binding, they do carry significant political weight and the Israeli embassy has warned of the risks of such proposals.
There were minor differences between the major parties over the wording of the proposal, the Socialists wanting the government to ‘recognise the Palestinian state’, while the Popular Party preferred ‘a commitment to launch an initiative toward recognition’. However, the ‘commitment’ had already been approved by Congress on several occasions, the last being the State of the Nation debate in 2011.
Neither the proposal made by the Socialists nor that by the Partido Popular set any sort of time limit for recognition, something the smaller parties in Congress had been demanding.