Catalonia today will not be the subject of confrontation in the meeting of the federal committee of the PSOE that Pedro Sánchez will star in front of the 28-M, according to Ferraz’s management. The president of the Spanish Government himself admits that the measures he adopted to defuse the Catalan conflict were “risky”, both the pardons to the pro-independence leaders convicted in the process and, above all, the criminal reform of sedition and embezzlement. But Sánchez defends that the effects of his policy in Catalonia are obvious: the tension of the process has been overcome, with the breakup of pro-independence unity and the end of the unilateral path, and coexistence has been restored. And this is also assumed, he claims, by the vast majority of the PSOE.
For Sánchez, the policy deployed in Catalonia must be an “electoral asset” of the PSOE before the next appointment with the municipal and regional ballot boxes, instead of a slab, for their expectations, as alert regional presidents who now choose to re-election as the Castilian-Mancheque Emiliano García-Page or the Aragonese Javier Lambán.
In addition to approving all the electoral candidacies on 28-M, and convening the municipal conference that will be held in Valencia on April 15 and 16, with more than a thousand candidates from all over Spain, the PSOE federal committee will also validate today the framework program for the regional elections, coordinated by the president of Extremadura, Guillermo Fernández Vara, who is also Ferraz’s regional policy secretary.
This program contains PSOE measures and priorities, which will then land in each territory, already adapted to each electoral candidate. But the same Vara, in the last meeting that he starred with Sánchez, in February in Badajoz, already urged the PSOE not to have “any objection or any complex” in front of the right to defend the policy of the president of the central government in Catalonia .
In line with Sánchez’s election speech, the Extremadura president denounced that it was under the PP governments that a self-determination referendum was held in Catalonia and a unilateral declaration of independence was approved. And he also emphasized that Sánchez did not hesitate to make himself “available” to the executive of Mariano Rajoy to apply article 155 of the Constitution.
“Don’t be afraid, don’t have complexes. And when they call us traitors, tell them that there is no greater betrayal of a country than allowing them to hold an independence referendum, that was indeed a betrayal!”, Vara shouted at the rally next door de Sánchez, who now in turn guarantees that there will be no self-determination referendum in Catalonia.
The framework program of the PSOE defends in any case the impetus of the Autonomous State and the “co-governance” with the autonomies put in place to face the pandemic and the management of the European recovery funds. “A model of shared responsibility that combines the three basic principles of a decentralized State, enshrined in Article 2 of the Constitution: unity, autonomy and solidarity”, states the document.
“The Constitution – he adds – equally recognizes the unity of the State and the right to autonomy of nationalities and regions. Building this balance is not easy. Co-governance is developed and sustained in a framework of dialogue under the principles of loyalty and collaboration, both due to the political will of the Government of Spain and the need to articulate the respective powers in a decentralized State”.
The PSOE’s federal committee is also held after the first secretary of the PSC, Salvador Illa, has agreed with ERC on the new budgets of the Generalitat. And he will hail the candidacy for Barcelona mayor of Jaume Collboni, who will also be present at Ferraz’s appointment. The “very real” options of recovering the government of the Catalan capital on 28-M are, for the socialists, one of the best proofs of the effectiveness of Sánchez’s policy of détente in Catalonia.
