The agreement of clarity, the mechanism to establish in agreement with the State the bases of the game of a hypothetical referendum, has never been sacred to the devotion of Junts or the CUP, and the PSC does not envisage it or how optional, because “referendums divide”. Pere Aragonès could perceive it from minute one of presenting the proposal – in April 2023. Today he continues to see it and sees, moreover, how these three parties ignore the table of Catalan parties that he said he would convene to open the debate and that everyone present their option. Nothing. In view of this, the president has decided to postpone the convening of this table, because he considers that there are “short-term maneuvers”.
He announced it in an interview with Efe. Only the commons endorse the clarity agreement and they were the only ones who regretted the delay. Joan Mena, spokesman for Catalonia in Commune, assured that “it is bad news”.
Mena attributed Aragonès’ decision to the “bad relations between Esquerra and Junts”. The Head of Government, in his statements, did not explain to whom he attributed those maneuvers, but it was understood that Junts’ rejection of the Amnesty law last Tuesday is one of the underlying reasons for postponing the party table . “I won’t name names, but I think it’s obvious. You just have to see what happens in the last weeks and months. What was impossible happens if it is possible, and in what was shielded and no amendment had to be made, there end up being amendments at the last minute”, he said in reference to the post-convergents.
So Aragonès is clear that until there are alternative proposals he will not convene the table. Nor if it sees that there are possibilities of blocking.
Together he reacted. “Tacticism is promoting a clarity agreement after it was rejected by Parliament to cover up the failure of the dialogue table” between the Spanish and Catalan governments, said the spokesperson of the formation, Josep Rius. “The clarity agreement, rather than parked, is dead and buried”, he replied.
Raquel Sans, spokesperson for ERC, responded to this “slogan” of JxCat. He accused them of being the party of no and reprimanded them for having no alternative to resolve the political conflict.
In any case, the republican clarified that under no circumstances will Aragonès resign from the table of Catalan parties. “It marks it as a non-priority,” specified Sans. According to the training of Oriol Junqueras, the preference is now the approval of the amnesty or the own financing that the president of the Generalitat claims for Catalonia.
The PSC regretted, but for singular reasons, the postponement of Aragonès. The socialists have always demanded a table of Catalan parties to resolve day-to-day issues. While it was considered this way, the president of the Generalitat despised and ignored the option. Now that he has it in mind, the PSC would only expect to be there if Aragonès opened up the range of debates and agreed to deal with the social and economic issues he claims to address at this table.
“Holding tables in which issues that divide society are not the most appropriate”, said PSC deputy Sílvia Paneque yesterday, who also made fighting the drought a priority.
The CUP, for its part, has never believed in the clarity agreement. He considers it “a mistake” to leave a hypothetical referendum in the hands of the State, since the conditions would be agreed upon.
Be that as it may, the agreement of clarity continues to travel through a path of brambles. On October 16, when Aragonès made it clear that of the five referendum options his was the Scottish way, he bet on convening the table right after the investiture of Pedro Sánchez. The meeting on December 21 postponed this space for dialogue for the first time and the Government’s intention was to meet there in January or February. Now the new delay puts a table against the ropes in which a large part of the rest of the parliamentary groups does not believe.
There is an addition: Aragonès and Sánchez pledged to resume negotiations to resolve the political conflict around the dialogue table during the first quarter of 2024. Everything points to the fact that the president will present himself without anything agreed upon in terms of the agreement of clarity.
