In this convulsed and accelerated end of the year, Pedro Sánchez has tied an absolute majority so that Congress approves today his controversial penal reform, which includes the repeal of sedition and the review of the crime of embezzlement agreed with ERC within the agenda for the dejudicialization of the political conflict in Catalonia.
The PSOE had already assumed the elimination of sedition, but was still beginning to digest a reform of embezzlement that reduces the maximum penalty for irregular budgetary deviation within the same public administration to four years –against the decriminalization that ERC sought–, when he is again forced to put himself on the defensive before the strategy of the Republicans to focus on the self-determination referendum.
In Moncloa, the exact moment in which Oriol Junqueras once again raised the flag of self-determination did not go unnoticed, without ruling out the unilateral path, while last Monday the PSOE sealed its agreement with ERC on embezzlement. In the midst of the offensive of the PP, Vox and Ciudadanos for the penal reform, with Unidas Podemos distancing itself from the review of embezzlement, and with some regional presidents and territorial leaders of the PSOE very alarmed, ERC complicates things more for Sánchez.
In the team of the Moncloa tenant they assume that ERC is trying to neutralize the claim that with the embezzlement reform – after the pardons to the leaders of the process and the elimination of the crime of sedition – the Catalan agenda is already closed by this legislature . In addition, they think that they are focusing on the referendum to minimize the cost, in their struggle with Junts, of having assumed an embezzlement that, according to the Government, will continue to penalize the events of 2017.
But it is evident that ERC makes a break with Sánchez’s strategy. After Junqueras’s words, the socialist ministers Félix Bolaños and Isabel Rodríguez were in charge of setting foot on the wall. “There will not be a referendum in Catalonia, neither agreed nor unilateral, because it is unconstitutional,” they replied in Moncloa. But yesterday it was the president of the Generalitat himself, Pere Aragonès, who insisted on warning that he “does not resign” in the face of Moncloa’s refusal to negotiate a referendum on self-determination, and defended that Catalonia “has the right to freely decide its future.” In his opinion, a referendum “can never be a crime.” And yesterday the ministers María Jesús Montero and Pilar Alegría, on behalf of the Government and the PSOE, were in charge of staging a resounding slam of the self-determination referendum. “With a government of Pedro Sánchez, a referendum of this type will never be held, neither regularly nor irregularly,” Montero wanted to settle.
In the socialist sector of the Executive and in Ferraz they warn that, despite ERC’s distraction strategy to “entangle”, “there will no longer be room for new adventures.” “The president has made it clear to the ministers that there is no room for anything that could be controversial,” they admit. It is about closing all possible folders before the end of the year, not opening new ones and highly controversial ones.
The added problem for Sánchez is that the minority partner of the government coalition, United We Can, also defends that “right to decide” of Catalonia. Minister Ione Belarra, general secretary of Podemos, thus considered yesterday that “it is perfectly legitimate” for Esquerra to raise it as a political proposal at “a negotiating table.” In Moncloa, however, they are not even contemplating a new meeting of the dialogue table between the two governments: “It is not scheduled,” they allege.
In this hectic scenario, alarms are increasing in sectors of the PSOE. If the day before it was the Castilian-La Mancha president Emiliano García-Page who cried out against the embezzlement reform – “it is not tolerable to agree with criminals on their own sentence” – yesterday it was the Aragonese Javier Lambán who reaffirmed his total opposition to this revision penalty, and demanded its aggravation. In addition, he urged to “rearm” the State before the self-determination referendum proposed by ERC. Both Page and Lambán, it must not be forgotten, are up for re-election at the polls next May.
The leader of the PSC, former minister Salvador Illa, was in charge of standing up to ERC and, at the same time, trying to contain the harsh criticism of these PSOE presidents. “That they stop deceiving and have the courage to tell the truth. Catalonia has turned the page on a lost decade and the process, and there will be no referendum on self-determination. Enough of dreaming impossible ”, he replied to ERC.
Illa also contacted Page yesterday and demanded “high vision to guarantee coexistence, harmony and reunion in Catalonia.” “What is good for Catalonia is good for Spain, because Catalonia is part of Spain,” she told him. It is not the first time that the leader of the PSC tries to calm the spirits of Page and Lambán. But without success.
