The past Spanish elections have left the result in the hands of two actors, whom, to simplify, we can call Pedro Sánchez and Carles Puigdemont, each with his party. There are two possibilities: a pact between the two actors through concessions from Sánchez so that the Junts parliamentary group, led by Puigdemont, supports his investiture, or provoke repeated elections.
Both actors would prefer the first of these two outcomes, but there would need to be mutual trust that the other would do his part. In particular, Puigdemont may be suspicious that, if he votes for the investiture, the new Frankenstein government could keep postponing the execution of the concessions. If these were of the type of regional financing reform, transfer of commuter trains and others of the like, they could take several months or perhaps years and would always lead to uncertainty about their compliance.
If I may be technical, the interaction can be modeled as a prisoner’s dilemma. Game theory teaches that these types of situations usually produce conflict outcomes that are bad for both parties. In the metaphor of the game, each of the two prisoners is isolated in his cell, does not trust the loyalty of the other and, just in case, they report each other, so that both receive an additional sentence higher than if they had cooperated.
However, mutually beneficial cooperation is not impossible. The current interaction between Sánchez and Puigdemont is formally the same as that between Rajoy and Puigdemont in October 2017. It failed because there was no direct communication between the parties and mutual distrust prevailed.
As in the prisoner’s dilemma game, both actors obtained a worse result than they would have obtained if Rajoy had refrained from suspending autonomy and Puigdemont had kept “suspended the effects of the declaration of independence” and called elections in Parliament. But neither trusted the other.
Rajoy had a well-founded fear that, if he refrained from applying Article 155, Puigdemont would have even more incentives to evade accusations of treason and the 155 silver coins and confirm the unilateral declaration of independence. Puigdemont, at the same time, feared that, even if he called elections, that same afternoon the Senate, with an absolute majority of the PP, would still approve the suspension of autonomy because everything was already ready, as Rajoy confirmed in his memoirs.
The current situation is not so urgent because you can reflect, negotiate, reach an agreement and make decisions for a few weeks. The key question is what kind of concessions can give confidence to the two actors that they will not be cheated by the other and that both will fulfill their part.
Together, I could give a confident vote of support for Sánchez’s investiture if the concessions were made legally and there was no way back in their execution. Promises about transfers of powers and finances, by themselves, do not fulfill this condition. They would fulfill it if an agreement was included prior to Sánchez’s inauguration for the president of the Generalitat to call elections to the Parliament of Catalonia, which would be held, as always, 54 days later, in which, in contrast to the two elections more recent Catalans, Carles Puigdemont could present himself as a candidate.
Legally, Puigdemont could campaign remotely as long as he was not tried and convicted, as he already did in the elections in which he was elected MEP. If elected, he could return from exile with his new immunity as a Catalan deputy. For an expeditious procedure, there are doubts about legal interpretation and judicial holidays, but, given some precedent and the political risk of a deadlock, an appropriate accommodation could be found.
In summary: the best way out would not be repeated Spanish elections, which neither actor prefers, but rather, after the Junts per Catalunya vote for Sánchez’s investiture, early Catalan elections without restrictions on candidacies. Critics of the right to self-determination usually say that it is already regularly exercised through democratic elections with the possibility of voting for pro-independence parties and that a referendum is not necessary. Defenders of the right to self-determination should dare to accept this approach and the binding outcome of these elections.
