Staging was the order of the day yesterday. Not just in Congress. Also in Parliament. ERC will hardly refuse to invest Pedro Sánchez with the amnesty on the verge of candy. Not together either. In the negotiation for the investiture of the socialist, it is difficult to elucidate who has the upper hand. Pedro Sánchez or the pro-independence parties? For a large part of independence, amnesty is irrefutable, even if “it is not an end point, but a starting point” to resolve “the political conflict”. In this case, it would be the socialist leader who stirs the pan. Yesterday Pere Aragonès, during the general policy debate in Parliament, fought to question it and tried to snatch it away. It is no small thing that the socialist leader plays the investiture. So he raised his price by demanding a “firm commitment” so that the conditions for a referendum are set during the possible 2023-2027 legislature.
For now, the amnesty is being cooked by the PSOE on a slow fire. At the same time ERC and Junts cook it on high heat on their own. The Republicans even claim that they exchange documentation with the PSOE and Sumar and that only technical aspects remain. In any case, you have to see if it ends up taking root. It will partly depend on how far ERC and Junts are willing to pull the strings. This commitment required of Sánchez to set the conditions for the referendum is tense.
Aragonès deliberately left the amnesty behind yesterday. The woman for granted. In his opinion, now is the time to open a new phase, that of the referendum. “We know that the amnesty will be a reality”, assured the president during a general policy debate that will last until Friday. It aspires to the opening of a new paradigm. It was clear in the following statements: it is necessary to “stop looking at what has happened in the last ten years and start talking about what will happen in the future”; “Let Pedro Sánchez take note”, remarked Aragonès.
Sánchez has only one option to be re-elected. It passes with the favorable votes of, among others, ERC and Junts. “We have the key to the governability of the State, and we must use it”, said Aragonès. The president demanded “courage” and “decision” from the socialist leader to address self-determination.
“Our duty is to take advantage of the opportunity”, he emphasized in a message addressed to ERC and Junts. For weeks, the Republican and his party have been trying to get the post-convergents to agree to a joint negotiation. Aragonés insisted on it later. ERC and Junts must take advantage of the fact that in a future Sánchez legislature they are key, since “this time it is not possible to build an alternative majority with Citizens every time” that pro-independence groups stand up.
Those of Carles Puigdemont reject unity, for now. Whether with or without, even so the president pointed out that, holding the key to governability in Madrid, pro-independence groups should “wrest from Sánchez the commitment that Catalonia will vote, if he wants to be president”.
Aragonès divided his intervention into four blocks. In the first, he focused on the need to advance opportunities, well-being and prosperity for citizens, with the Catalan language as a cohesive element of population diversity. He then addressed the four major “transformations” that he said he has been carrying out since the legislature began: social, ecological, feminist and democratic (which includes the right to self-determination). The president dedicated the third block to pointing out the most prominent policies of each of the Ministries of the Generalitat, as well as their projects for the remainder of the Catalan legislature. The denunciation of a fiscal deficit that the Generalitat has put at 22,000 million euros was one of the elements it introduced to denounce the difficulties in carrying out social policies. The other big grievance, Rodalies.
In this sense, the head of the Government is convinced that he can exhaust the four years of his mandate. The Republican experienced a highly uncomfortable situation last year, precisely in the past general policy debate. Together, it overshadowed the clarity agreement that Aragonès announced in Parliament to set the terms of a referendum when he demanded a question of confidence if he did not comply with three of the investment agreements signed between ERC and JxCat in mid-2021. Aragonès dismissed the then Vice President of the Government, Jordi Puigneró, the following day. The post-convergents left the Catalan Executive a few days later.
ERC was forced to go ahead with the sole support of its 33 deputies – the majority in Parliament is in 68 seats – and to open the doors to the PSC for the first time in years to try to approve the budgets of the Generalitat for 2023. The socialists took the talks to the limit, but finally Aragonès was able to save the match point.
Yesterday Aragonès once again wielded the agreement of clarity, the one with which all parties should mark the rules of the game, taking the example of Scotland, Ireland or Quebec. The president announced that the experts he appointed in May to lead the process of this clarity agreement will soon present their conclusions so that they can then be debated by civil society. He trusts that this time Junts will not overshadow his intervention in the general policy debate.
