ERC is not willing to allow a future amnesty to be based on the assumption that 1-O was a crime. It is an aspect that the PSOE contemplates, according to the Republicans, in its proposals for the law and that Esquerra rejects outright. He argues that accepting this premise in the preamble of the text would be admitting that the call for a referendum was not decriminalized, when it stopped carrying criminal consequences in 2005, even though it had no legal protection. At the same time, assuming that that unilateral consultation was a crime would imply, according to Esquerra, that the amnesty law would be a pardon.
Neither one nor the other is acceptable or acceptable to those of Oriol Junqueras. This fact, together with the blockade that they denounce from the Ministry of Finance for the political agreements reached in the previous legislature to become effective, has caused the party to raise alarm signals. “The negotiation is not going well” or “the negotiation is green” are phrases repeated these days by Pere Aragonès and Laura Vilagrà.
Yesterday Oriol Junqueras put the icing on this story, who after his visit to former Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams in Belfast assured that Pedro Sánchez “is not doing anything” to achieve his investiture.
Republicans judge that, to make matters worse, expressions such as “reconciliation” or “coexistence” are not acceptable either. The solution for ERC is that the hypothetical law ignores that 1-O was a crime. For the independence party, one more step, that is, for the PSOE to admit in the statement of reasons that 1-O was not a crime would be ideal, but it understands that the socialists will not tolerate this premise.
Faced with the optimism that Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz exhibited on Tuesday during the signing of the PSOE-Sumar investiture agreement, the independentistas show widespread discontent. Pere Aragonès expressed it yesterday before the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, personally. Then he warned him in public and before Catalan businessmen, in an event organized by the Cecot employers’ association in Sant Cugat del Vallès that it is necessary to put an end to “the brakes that Rodalies represents” and the fiscal deficit.
Bolaños, on the other hand, gave two nods to the independence movement. One for ERC and another for Junts. To the post-convergents, because he assured that “a new stage” is opening with “a search for agreements between different people”; to the Republicans, because he placed the dialogue table – from which agreements such as the reform of the Penal Code came out – at the level of the restitution of the Generalitat and the recognition as president of Josep Tarradellas, the Constitution – “which guaranteed its own institutions to Catalunya”–, the agreement for the Statute of 1979 or the pacts on the linguistic model.
The minister, before his speech, met discreetly in Barcelona with the president of the ERC parliamentary group, Josep Maria Jové. Shortly afterwards, he communicated to Aragonès what he had discussed with Bolaños at the meeting.
The dialogue table is back in vogue, according to ERC. That it be reactivated is one of the three folders, along with amnesty and advances in social welfare, that the Republicans set as a condition for the investiture.
Thus, regarding advances in self-determination, ERC assures that with the PSOE the issues to be discussed at that dialogue table are being outlined. Let the spectrum open and let the conversations not be limited to talking only about a hypothetical referendum. Likewise, those from Junqueras once again limit contacts at the dialogue table to the sole participation of the Spanish and Catalan governments.
The participation of the parties and a possible rapporteur or intermediary would only be admitted in a subsequent committee of the agreements that could have been reached at the dialogue table.
The third folder, social welfare, is stuck. There are steps from the socialists for the transfer of Rodalies, but the PSOE only wants to grant the lines that are not “of general interest.” Or in other words: only railway lines that had their beginning and end in Catalonia would be transferred. An example: a line that runs between Papiol and Bellaterra. Or another in Lleida that the Republicans have already pointed out to the socialists that the Generalitat already manages. It is totally insufficient for ERC and the Government.
In social welfare there is another subfolder: ending the fiscal deficit. ERC pushes to obtain better financing. The Republicans propose that the Generalitat collect all taxes and end this fiscal deficit, which in 2021 alone, according to calculations by the Department of Economy, was 22,000 million euros. Esquerra understands that the solution cannot come at once due to the economic amount and the size of the proposals, but calls on Sánchez to find a middle ground.
But ERC has a complaint that undermines all its confidence with respect to the PSOE: the political negotiation is advancing minimally and in fits and starts, but it entails an economic negotiation that is completely stuck, according to the Government, when the issues land in the Ministry of Finance, which directed by María Jesús Montero. Aspects such as the Minimum Living Income, the 60 million for the Catalunya Media City audiovisual center, the amount for the expansion of Mossos d’Esquadra agents from 18,000 to 22,000 troops that was agreed years ago or scholarships are some of the issues that Esquerra denounces that they have not been made effective for this reason.
