“There is no alternative, so we will last as long as we last.” The president of the Generalitat does not have the makings of a master of ceremonies but he takes on the challenge of surviving the three-ring circus that the ERC directorate has been managing for a week: A Govern in a large minority (33 deputies out of 135), the Parliament turned into a Vietnam and a negotiation in which the PSOE imposes its times and priorities to guarantee budgets (and the legislature) without concessions that suppose an electoral punishment. It is Oriol Junqueras who is pushing to move the centennial socialist elephant, which is now seeking the spirit of Felipe González’s victory 40 years ago to ward off the bad omens in the polls.
ERC does not present an amendment to all of Pedro Sánchez’s third budgets to “keep the ongoing negotiations alive”, in the plural. That of the budgets and those that take place at the dialogue table between governments and beyond. The Republicans thus contribute to “generating conditions of trust” that are essential, Gabriel Rufián does not appear before the press and Sánchez reaffirms from Brussels his commitment to modify the crime of sedition to standardize the Spanish Penal Code with the legislation of other European democracies. That conditions it to have the necessary parliamentary majority is nothing more than Sánchez’s management of the calendar.
The Government and ERC agreed at the dialogue table that there would be legislative changes in the field of the so-called “dejudicialization” before the end of the year. And there are no movements in sight but the meetings that this week could have ended in “disaster” for ERC have not. The official discourse points out that “one thing has nothing to do with the other”, that the negotiation of the accounts has its own dynamic, and there ERC calls for measures in the area of ??housing, tax reforms and, once again, mechanisms for compliance with investments budgeted in Catalonia. The same argument is handled in the socialist ranks and even the common ones.
The Republicans are extremely annoyed that the PSOE is rushing the negotiations so much and not being able to show achievements on any of the open fronts. The life conditioned to the tempo that Sánchez prints is a political weapon for Junts and can tense the ERC congress this fall. But there are more calendars. The one of the courts. The decisive votes of ERC in Madrid only serve if the left governs and new convictions or the prospect of some prison sentence would make the trapeze artists of the dialogue fall.
Sánchez will have budgets while Aragonès is already a victim of the technical extension of the Catalan accounts. Jaume Giró had planned that the project would be approved on Tuesday in the Consell Executiu and would have the green light in the Parlament in December. The process has been stopped for three weeks and with hundreds of games going from one ministry to another due to changes in powers. And there comes the momentum of Salvador Illa. The outstretched hand of the electoral adversary. If Aragonès has met two European commissioners, Illa will meet three next week. And he offers his votes for budgets. “It is the great decision that Aragonès has to make”, they maintain. We’re not on that track yet.
Not expected, the binge of disqualifications and defeats in Parliament is more digestible. The ERC leadership had analyzed all the scenarios derived from the break with Junts and resignation was imposed on the faces of its 33 deputies. “There are majorities.” Aragonés insists. They are “outright”, “broad and transversal”, “of the country”… depending on whether what is defended is the fight against the crisis, repression or the right to decide. There is also another majority, that of the “embarrassed opposition”, where PSC, Junts and the commons are registered. “He has managed to piss us all off. It has merit”, they reply sarcastically from the post-convergent ranks.
Junts’ situation does not allow jokes. It is hard”. The management is resigned for a “speech”, the pragmatists complain… The former ministers have been incorporated into the executive and it could even be considered to start up a commissioner for a hypothetical budget negotiation with the ERC. Jordi Turull has officially ruled out a shadow post-convergence government. And there would be two. Looking for a president would force a primaries…
