ERC is not prepared for a future amnesty to start from the basis that 1-O was a crime. It is an aspect that the PSOE foresees, according to the republicans, in its proposals for the law and that Esquerra rejects outright. He argues that to accept this premise in the preamble of the text would be to admit that the call for a referendum was not decriminalized, when it ceased to carry criminal consequences in 2005, even if it had no legal protection. At the same time, assuming that unilateral consultation was a crime would imply, according to Esquerra, that the amnesty law would be a pardon.
Neither one nor the other is acceptable or acceptable for Oriol Junqueras. This fact, together with the blockade that they denounce from the Ministry of Finance so that political agreements reached in the previous legislature are effective, has caused the party to give alarm signals. “The negotiation is not going well” or “the negotiation is green” are phrases repeated these days by Pere Aragonès and Laura Vilagrà.
Yesterday Oriol Junqueras put the icing on this story, who after his visit to Belfast to former Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams assured that Pedro Sánchez “is not doing anything” to get his investiture.
Republicans think that, to top it all off, expressions like “reconciliation” or “coexistence” are also not acceptable. The solution for ERC is that the hypothetical law obviates that the 1-O was a crime. For the pro-independence formation, one more step, that is, for the PSOE to admit in the statement of reasons that the 1-O was not a crime would be ideal, but he understands that the socialists will not tolerate this premise.
Faced with the optimism that Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz exhibited on Tuesday during the signing of the PSOE-Sumar investiture agreement, pro-independence supporters are showing widespread dissatisfaction. Pere Aragonès expressed this yesterday in front of the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, personally. He then warned him in public and in front of Catalan businessmen, in an event organized by the employers’ association Cecot in Sant Cugat del Vallès, that it is necessary to put an end to the “brake caused by Rodalies” and the fiscal deficit.
Bolaños, on the other hand, made two gestures towards independence. One for ERC and another for Junts. To the post-convergents, because he assured that “a new stage” is opening with “the search for agreements between different”; to the Republicans, because he placed the dialogue table – from which agreements such as the reform of the Penal Code emerged – at the same level as the restitution of the Generalitat and the recognition as president of Josep Tarradellas, the Constitution, – “which guaranteed its own institutions for Catalonia”, the agreement for the 1979 Statute or the pacts on the linguistic model.
The minister, before his speech, met discreetly in Barcelona with the president of the ERC parliamentary group, Josep Maria Jové, who soon informed Aragonès of what he had discussed with Bolaños at the meeting.
The dialogue table is back in vogue, according to ERC. That it be reactivated is one of the three folders, along with amnesty and advances in social welfare, that the Republicans put as a condition for the investiture.
Thus, with respect to progress in self-determination, ERC assures that the topics to be discussed in this dialogue table are being marked with the PSOE. That the range be opened and that the conversations are not limited to talking only about a hypothetical referendum. Equally, those of Junqueras again circumscribe the contacts at the dialogue table to the sole participation of the Spanish and Catalan governments.
The participation of the parties and a possible rapporteur or mediator would only be admitted in a subsequent commission of the agreements that could have been reached at the dialogue table.
The third folder, social welfare, is stuck. There are steps by the Socialists for the transfer of Rodalies, but the PSOE only wants to grant the lines that are not of “general interest”. Or in other words: only railway lines that start and end in Catalonia would be crossed. An example: a line that runs between Papiol and Bellaterra. Or another one in Lleida that the Republicans have already informed the Socialists that the Generalitat already manages. It is totally insufficient for ERC and the Government.
In social welfare there is another sub-folder: ending the fiscal deficit. ERC colla to obtain better financing. The Republicans propose that the Generalitat collect all taxes and put an end to the fiscal deficit, which in 2021 alone, according to calculations by the Department of Economy, was 22,000 million euros. Esquerra understands that the solution cannot come all at once due to the economic amount and the scale of the proposals, but calls for finding an intermediate point.
But ERC has a complaint that undermines all its confidence with regard to the PSOE: the political negotiation is progressing minimally and in leaps and bounds, but it involves an economic negotiation that is completely stuck, according to the Government, when the issues land in the Ministry of Finance, which leads María Jesús Montero. Aspects such as the minimum living income, the 60 million for the audiovisual center Catalunya Media City, the amount for the expansion of Mossos d’Esquadra agents from 18,000 to 22,000 effective that was agreed years ago or the scholarships are some of the issues that Esquerra denounces that have not yet become effective for this reason.
