One of the demands they make the PSOE and Sumar in exchange for negotiating the amnesty is that the two major independence parties, ERC and Juntsexplicitly renounce to unilaterality. Well, this Monday the Republicans wanted to make it clear that they do not intend to do so, although now – and for some years now – they are prioritizing the route of dialogue and pact. “We are not renouncing any democratic path, but obviously we prioritize the path of negotiation,” the Republican spokesperson, Raquel Sans, said this Monday after the party’s executive.
It has been a long time since ERC relegated unilaterality from both its speech and the strategic roadmap, but it is a very different thing to publicly renounce it at the explicit desire of its rivals in this negotiation. For this reason, the Republicans continue without completely ruling it out, and return to the mantra that who has always acted with “unilaterality” has been the Government, denying an independence referendum in Catalonia. “Who is unilateral with respect to the political conflict is the State. Our way – the referendum – includes those of ‘yes’, those of ‘no’ and those of ‘maybe’,” Sans stressed.
Regarding the negotiations for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, ERC remains upset by the slowness with which the talks are progressing. As Oriol Junqueras’ party already did in its national council this weekend, Sans has once again insisted that the PSOE must now finalize the pact for the amnesty. This Monday, the Republicans have focused their pressure on the acting president: “Let him wake up.” According to the ERC spokesperson, we must give the amnesty “discounted”, but the truth is that there is no closed agreement, much less in writing.
The impact of Catalan in Europe
This Tuesday it will be known if the Catalan is closer to being official language of the European Union or, on the contrary, the situation becomes complicated. If the scenario is the second, it remains to be seen if this ends up negatively impacting the negotiations for the investiture with the PSOE and Sumar. This Monday Esquerra has given a vote of confidence to the socialists and has avoided clarifying whether the talks will be broken in the event that the operation to make Catalan official in Europe ends up failing. The Republicans do not want to set “red lines” and have limited themselves to asking the Government to fight as hard as possible to achieve this official status: “It is their responsibility.”
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In fact, the Republicans do not want to set how Red lines nor the transfer to the Generalitat of the complete management of Rodalies, nor the end of the fiscal deficit. These are conditions that ERC has put on the table since the electoral campaign, but that it now avoids setting as ‘sine qua non’ conditions. The explanation given by the party is that it is time to negotiate with “discretion” since it considers that it is the best path to success.
For ERC we must start from the basis that, with Sánchez, anything is possible because in the past he also denied pardons and in the end they ended up arriving. In fact, for Republicans there is another clear example. This week it will be possible to speak Catalan in Congress after years of being prohibited. “They told us ‘never penguins’ and in the end we will speak in Catalan,” Sans concluded.