With the report of the group of experts on the clarity agreement already on the table, the ‘president’ of the Generalitat, Pere Aragones, will announce its position on the matter on Monday. He will do it at noon, after he has met with the Academic Council who was commissioned to prepare this analysis to begin designing the agreement, which aims to resolve the political conflict. The text, of 64 pages, and advanced this Wednesday by EL PERIÓDICO, addresses several possibilities, reviews the pros and cons of this consultation and offers alternatives.
This is the academic opinion of the nine personalities appointed on April 18 by the Government, and who in recent months have been addressing the questions posed to them by the Generalitat to celebrate a referendum on the independence of Catalonia in an agreed manner. The teacher of Political Sciences of the Pompeu Fabra University Marc Sanjaumewho has led the work, will also take a position on the matter once the meeting ends next Monday.
In parallel, once the experts have been heard, the president has called an extraordinary meeting of the Executive Council, to address the Government’s position regarding the report. An opinion that, later, the ‘president’ himself will communicate in a public appearance.
It will be then when Aragonès will be spoken for the first time officially, although this Wednesday, since his institutional trip to Bologna, he has already warned that his position is that “a referendum on independence be held and that the results can be applied.” An important nuance, because neither 9-N, nor 1-O, managed to apply the decision expressed at the polls.
What does the report say?
The academic council’s report defends that a referendum “organized in a politically and legally appropriate manner” could be “a good mechanism to seek a democratic and legitimate solution to the conflict,” although they also make it clear that it is not the only one and maintain that the pact between representative institutions is a “necessary condition” for legitimacy and “an element that contributes to its legal fit.”
In this sense, they propose five referendum proposals, but he does not lean towards any and says that they can be complementary. The first is one “starting in the substate territory” that contemplates consult in Catalonia on the convenience of the Parliament approving the initiation of a constitutional reform process.
The second is one “of ratification in the sub-state territory” that supposes that the Catalans vote a political agreement previously reached on independence or on a reform of the Statute, for example.
The third is one “starting throughout the State” – that is, that a vote be called throughout Spain under article 92 of the Constitution asking if it would agree to the Government authorizing a consultation in Catalonia on independence– and the fourth is one of “ratification throughout the State” – that is to approve throughout Spain the terms of the disconnection.
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Finally, the fifth foresees a referendum “in the sub-state territory and in the State as a whole”, which would combine all the possibilities analyzed and which would become a double vote.
The third and fifth options, academics believe, are unusual and would generate a possible clash of wills.