“The new legislature cannot swing over Catalonia.” A senior leader of the PSC pointed out, shortly before Pedro Sánchez’s inauguration, the political direction that the new progressive coalition government should take. After the pardons, the reform of the Penal Code and the amnesty, which will still cause talk for many months, the socialists need time for their electorate to digest the concession to the independence movement and to recover from an electoral cost, already calculated, which they consider “affordable.” if everything goes as with the pardons.
“If it works, people will end up understanding it,” predicts a former minister who does not repeat himself, but who is “very convinced” that the amnesty will allow the socialists to appear as “the solution.” Although he also admits that the digestion of the measure will not be the same in Catalonia as in the rest of Spain, “as happened with the pardons,” he recalls.
The PSC’s electoral prospects in Catalonia are good, but they are not enough to govern alone, and in the party’s engine room they are aware that amnesty is burning among their electorate. This is reflected in the CEO’s latest barometer, the Catalan CIS, which indicates that only 49% of PSC voters are in favor of this measure and 41% are against it. Even so, the survey gives Salvador Illa’s party its best electoral forecast to date, up to 45 seats, a “fictitious photo”, they warn, but which shows that digestion may be lighter among the Catalan electorate.
Thanks to the result of the PSC on 23-J, Sánchez is today president and was able to re-edit the coalition government, but the CIS already places the PP clearly ahead, which is why the new government must strive to “reorient the debate towards public policies and not so much towards the territorial question,” another socialist source agrees.
“The PSC electorate does not like conflict, and the response will be good, but the PSOE has a more serious problem” due to judicial and right-wing noise. “It will cost more, but the facts will prevail,” they predict in the PSC.
Illa’s party feels reinforced by its successes at the polls, by the independence movement, and by appearing as the best qualified by the electorate to solve economic, security, poverty and inequality problems, and relations between Catalonia and Spain. To achieve the same, the new Sánchez Government will try to project its own agenda, based on “employment, the social shield, the reforms…”, although “there are issues that you are going to have even if you don’t want to,” they admit. and they will have a Catalan background.
“In a few months it will be impossible” for the PSOE to recover from the cost of the measure, “but it will be possible in the medium term,” they bet. They even foresee that the opinion of the judicial career will modulate, “aware that society does not have a great opinion of the Spanish justice system either.”
The amnesty fulfilled a double goal for the socialists. “Although this tears us inside,” another source acknowledges, there was no other path to the investiture. Furthermore, Sánchez’s interest in “doing politics” with Junts, as with ERC, comes from afar, and has served to keep the PP in the corner of thinking with Vox. The PSOE will have a prosperous legislature if the concrete with which it has built the motley wall against the right is forged, although governability will not be a bed of roses. “Until the PP separates from Vox, it will not govern,” warns the aforementioned former socialist minister.
And in Catalonia, Illa concludes, with the amnesty, his mission of breaking the blocks of the process through the pact, something that he has been successfully cultivating in the Parliament and in local corporations since he won the Catalan elections of 2021. ” Turning the page” was that: putting the process in front of the mirror and anointing it with a pardon to return the independence leaders, including Puigdemont, to politics.
But if the mission carries risks, explaining it is also a problem. The PSC is in trouble when it comes to clearly justifying the reason for the amnesty without provoking the wrath of Junts. Sánchez tried to do it in the investiture debate by raising the “forgiveness” and jeopardized the success of the vote for a few hours.
“We are agreeing on the conditions of an unmitigated political defeat,” summarized a PSC leader before general media in Brussels, when the amnesty was still being negotiated. The journalists discussed the aphorism, upset that Puigdemont could “return to Spain as a hero” and without being accountable to justice. The socialist leader replied that, politically, the former president “has not achieved anything” since he went to Waterloo, and that “a victor was not amnested,” although without his political rehabilitation it would be impossible to turn the page once and for all.
The other major journalistic concern revolved around the pro-independence stubbornness due to unilateralism, to which the leader resolved: “It does not matter so much that they say they will do it again, as that they cannot do it again even when the conditions are met.” to do it again.” It is, therefore, about “making it impossible to go down that path.”
And that is where Illa’s role comes in with her plan to win the presidency of the Generalitat. His “forceful but constructive” opposition is bearing fruit with the invaluable help of Moncloa. Illa squeezes the Government but does not suffocate, and even less so now. The amnesty must be digested.
