The acting President of the Government, Pedro Sanchez, begins to be subjected to a pressure cooker. If this week has been marked by a PP that at the sound of a bugle José María Aznar has called for a demonstration against an amnesty law yet to be definedthis weekend it was the independentists who urged the leader of the PSOE to launch negotiations for the investiture that, they warn, They are green. The two burning points are clear: the total dejudicialization of the conflict and, more immediately, unraveling the official status of Catalan in the European Parliament, which is encountering reluctance from some member states. The calendar is tightening while the socialists hope to be able to gauge the impact of the right-wing protest next week and the failure of the investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo before moving token.
The warnings have come from both Junts and ERC, which this Saturday met with their national councils. Those of Carles Puigdemont They have notified Sánchez that can bring “surprises” if it does not urgently roll up its sleeves to meet its expectations, while ERC has been categorical in stating that Things are not going well” because the dialogue does not advance either in the calendar or in the content. The icing on the cake has been put by the president of the Commons in Parliament, Jessica Albiachwhich has demanded that the PSOE “accelerate” the negotiations, at the same time, Jaume Asensto whom Sumar has entrusted the dialogue with Waterloo, has admitted in an interview in ‘Vilaweb’ that the socialists have not put on the table no proposal or text about amnesty.
Fleeing from a negotiation ‘in extremis’
The fear of all the parties in the dance is that Sánchez will subject them to a express negotiation. While the post-convergents, through the mouth of their spokesperson in Congress, Miriam Nogueras, has dropped that “they will not reduce demands as some seem to do” – a shot at ERC – and that they will not give up “charging in advance” no matter how much the calendar is extended, the Republicans have assured that they are not willing to submit to a give and take ‘in extremis’. “ERC does not want to encounter a negotiation at the last minute and last-minute concessions for partisan purposes,” said the party’s general secretary, Marta Rovirareturning the bar to the post-convergents.
That the negotiations for the investiture with the PSOE will not be understood without the all-out fight between Junts and ERC has once again been evident in some post-Diada speeches that have also illustrated how both formations show themselves impervious to blocking requests and unilateralist speeches from sectors such as the ANC. If there is one fear on Calàbria Street, it is that Puigdemont will take sole responsibility for achievement of an amnesty -or equivalent figure- when it was precisely they who, they claim, they have “opened the way” to make it possible. In fact, Rovira has taken “for granted” that the PSOE assumes this amnesty because it was already included in the pact for the dialogue table, in which the commitment to address the dejudicialization “by each and every one of the necessary legal means.”
Tuesday’s litmus test with Catalan
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If amnesty is now a possibility that is on the table, the Republican has insisted, it is because pardons and the elimination of sedition from the penal code were approved before. However, Junts continues to pay the “in exchange for nothing” which, in his opinion, has marked ERC’s negotiating strategy with the PSOE. On the contrary, Nogueras specified, they are going to be the ones to “get paid in advance.” His ‘yes’ to Sánchez, he has reiterated, means that the amnesty law and the use of Catalan in Brussels are approved before the formation of the new Government. Tuesday will be, for Junts, a cotton test. It is the date of the first plenary session in which it is planned that it will be possible to speak Catalan in Congress, but also the day when the official status of this language is debated in the European Parliament. “We will then see the level of credibility of the PSOE“said the Junts leader.
ERC has already given all its leaders the directive to use exclusively Catalan in all his interventions in both Congress and the Senate. And in her desire not to be overshadowed by the determining role of Junts in the arithmetic, she has reminded Sánchez that, although the resolution of the conflict and the amnesty have to be “at the center” of her agenda, there are also other issues pending. address, like the rfiscal deficit reduction and Rodalies. If the independence supporters are warning the acting president one thing, it is that the investiture, like the trains on the railway network in Catalonia, may be late. Or, directly, never arrive.