Reserved from a restaurant in Barcelona. Carles Puigdemont on a computer screen. On the other side, Junts number two, Jordi Turull, along with one of the former president’s trusted men and parliamentary spokesman, Albert Batet. The remote lunch took place yesterday before the executive of the formation that has in her hand the key to make Pedro Sánchez president or to repeat the elections. If anyone has any doubts about who is the one who sets a position in Junts, he can already dispel it.
The environment of the former president was euphoric yesterday with the interest that Puigdemont suddenly awakens in Madrid. Junts has spent years without stable dialogue and of a certain level in Moncloa, since any contact caused the suspicions of ERC, which immediately required exclusive attention from the PSOE. Puigdemont will try to pay the bill for these rudeness, to the Republicans and to Sánchez himself. The result of Junts has not been good (it has lost one seat and 137,000 votes, and has not surpassed ERC), but it gives it a valuable role.
The chances of reaching an agreement are limited. Puigdemont has been preaching the clash with the State for six years and he is not one of those who changes his mind easily. He accumulates resentments against those who have agreed with the supposed enemy (ERC and the PDECat) and also against Sánchez. And he has always made it clear that he is not looking for a solution to his personal situation.
It is true that the opportunity comes to him at his worst moment. His party has lost several places of power and the General Court of the European Union has just withdrawn the immunity of the European Parliament, so that he does not even attend the sessions in Strasbourg to avoid possible arrest if he leaves Belgium. By virtue of that ruling, the Prosecutor’s Office suddenly asked the Supreme Court to reactivate as soon as possible the euro arrest warrant for the former president to the Belgian authorities. The extradition request would place Puigdemont before Spanish public opinion as the fugitive from justice who is negotiating with Sánchez, while Alberto Núñez Feijóo will insist that the PSOE let him govern with one abstention. However, it is likely that Judge Pablo Llarena will wait for the higher European court, the CJEU, to rule on the appeal that the former president has already announced.
The million dollar question is what Puigdemont will do. Sumar announced yesterday that the former deputy for the commons Jaume Asens is in talks with Waterloo to obtain his support. Asens maintains a good relationship with one of the former expatriate ministers, Toni Comín, and was an essential piece when the members of the Government of the Generalitat escaped to Belgium in 2017. But the former president will want a more direct dialogue with Moncloa.
The starting point is to demand amnesty and the self-determination referendum. The course of that second requirement is rather nil, beyond the commitment that already exists to submit to a vote the agreement that could be reached at the dialogue table between the Catalan and central governments. For Moncloa, the viable conversations would focus on the first of the demands, even if it is called something else. It would be about exploring a legal formula to avoid new imprisonments as a result of the process. In this sense, Puigdemont will feel the pressure from those who are at risk of ending up in jail and who now see an opportunity to find a way out of their situation.
The expresident is not very permeable to pressure. He demonstrated it in 2017, when they demanded that he call elections instead of the unilateral declaration of independence. It will be difficult for him to veer into a more compromising position. It would only be feasible if he wrests an agreement from the PSOE that justifies his option for “exile” and leaves the strategy followed by ERC in evidence before the pro-independence electorate.
How far will Sánchez be willing to go? For the moment, prudence prevails in the Moncloa. Yolanda Díaz will begin to do “pedagogy” defending a way out for the leaders of the process pending trial. Salvador Illa has also been building bridges with Junts, despite the clash over the mayoralty of Barcelona.
Sánchez had been well aware for a long time that his chances of continuing at Moncloa could go through Junts. He first hoped that this party would experience a pragmatic turn that did not quite come. Despite the internal tensions in Junts, Puigdemont’s position has always been decisive. So the electoral repetition is a feasible scenario.
In Catalonia, the PSC has obtained 1.1 million votes, while ERC and Junts have added 823,000 ballots. Although the useful vote to stop the right has been crucial, in each election, the socialists gain a foothold in Catalonia and the independence movement loses ground.
The Catalan political map reveals an evident desire to avoid new convulsions. Not only because PSC and ERC, who have dialogued to redirect the conflict, together with Sumar, account for two million votes, but because the PP and Vox fail to take off in this square. The popular ones have grown in Catalonia from two to six seats, but they expected a minimum of eight. The result denotes the perception among a large part of the voters that a government of the PP and Vox could return Catalonia to the moments of tension of the past.
Meanwhile, Feijóo, as the winner of the elections, was trying to forge an impossible agreement in which Vox and the PNV shared space. In fact, the leader of the PP could only ask the King to commission him to appear for an investiture if he at least had the support of the extreme right, but that would already mean a tie that could take its toll on him in the event that Sánchez fails with Puigdemont and it is necessary to go to a repeat election. Feijóo’s options are reduced. The popular ones have an advantage such as the D’Hondt law, since they have achieved barely 300,000 more votes, which have translated into no less than a premium of 14 more seats. But its disadvantage is the lack of possible parliamentary allies and the incompatibility of these with each other.
The 23-J shows that we are not before a block of the left and one of the right that aspire to govern. The axis that marks the pacts is territorial, since the time of Jordi Pujol. The PP hardly has allies of regional obedience (only Canaries and Navarrese), while the PSOE has more options. The discourse that moves the vote, since 2017, is also that of the relationship with the independence movement, whether Basque or Catalan. That is the true pending question of democratic functioning in Spain, the insertion of the role of the autonomies and their parties in the governability of Spain.
