Catalonia will not be the object of confrontation today in the meeting of the federal committee of the PSOE that Pedro Sánchez will lead before the 28-M, as they consider in the direction of Ferraz. The Prime Minister himself admits that the measures he adopted to defuse the Catalan conflict were “risky”, both the pardons for the pro-independence leaders convicted of the process and, above all, the penal reform of sedition and embezzlement. But Sánchez defends that the effects of his policy in Catalonia are evident: the tension of the process was overcome, with the breakdown of the independence unity and the end of the unilateral path, and coexistence was recovered. And this is also assumed, they allege, by the vast majority of the PSOE.
For Sánchez, the policy deployed in Catalonia should be an “electoral asset” of the PSOE before the next appointment with the municipal and regional polls, instead of a drag on their expectations, according to warnings from regional presidents who are now running for re-election, such as the Castilian-La Mancha Emiliano García-Page or Javier Lambán from Aragon.
In addition to approving all the 28-M electoral candidacies and calling the municipal conference to be held in Valencia on April 15 and 16, with more than a thousand candidates from all over Spain, the PSOE federal committee will also validate today the framework program for the regional elections, coordinated by the president of Extremadura, Guillermo Fernández Vara, who is also Ferraz’s secretary for regional politics.
This program contains measures and priorities of the PSOE, which will later land in each territory, already adapted to each electoral candidate. But Vara himself, in the last rally that he led with Sánchez last February in Badajoz, already urged the PSOE to have “no qualms or complexes” about the right to defend the policy of the President of the Government in Catalonia.
In line with Sánchez’s electoral discourse, the Extremaduran president denounced that it was under the PP governments when a self-determination referendum was held in Catalonia and a unilateral declaration of independence was approved. And he also stressed that Sánchez did not hesitate to make himself “available” to the Executive of Mariano Rajoy to apply article 155 of the Constitution.
“Don’t be afraid or have complexes. And when they call us traitors, tell them that there is no greater betrayal of a country than allowing them to hold an independence referendum. That really was a betrayal!” Vara exclaimed at that rally together with Sánchez, who now in turn guarantees that there will be no referendum on self-determination in Catalonia.
The framework program of the PSOE defends in any case the impulse of the autonomous State and the “co-governance” with the autonomies set in motion to face the pandemic and the management of European recovery funds. “A model of shared responsibility that combines the three basic principles of a decentralized State, enshrined in article 2 of the Constitution: unity, autonomy and solidarity,” the document highlights.
“The Constitution – he adds – equally recognizes the unity of the State and the right to autonomy of nationalities and regions. Building that balance is not easy. Co-governance is developed and sustained in a framework of dialogue under the principles of loyalty and collaboration, both due to the political will of the Government of Spain and the need to articulate the respective powers in a decentralized State”.
The federal committee of the PSOE is also held after the leader of the PSC, Salvador Illa, has agreed with ERC on the new budgets of the Generalitat. And he will acclaim Jaume Collboni’s candidacy for mayor of Barcelona, ??who will also be present at the meeting in Ferraz. The “very real” options of recovering the government of the Catalan capital on March 28 are, for the Socialists, one of the best proofs of the effectiveness of Sánchez’s détente policy in Catalonia.
