J ordi Pujol, the former president of the Generalitat, has made explicit these days his support for the electoral list of Junts, Carles Puigdemont’s party. And he has done so with an argument that could contain high doses of nostalgia, taking into account the career and age of the person who formulates it: “it is the one that is closest to what Convergència was”, the party that governed Catalonia for 23 years, which Pujol founded and of which, according to him, Junts would be a successor.
Will Pujol’s words be the announcement of the good news of the birth or return of the conservative or liberal party that the Catalan bourgeoisie has been sponsoring for a decade, until now with little success? Or is it again a simple mirage that will fade as has happened repeatedly in other previous attempts, since the disappearance of Unió, the historical partner of the convergentes; the successive neoconvergent platforms that could not withstand even an electoral campaign; to the grotesque drifts of Ciudadanos or the superb Parisian Manuel Valls.
Josep Sánchez Llibre, the president of Foment, the Catalan employers’ association, has been the most visible defender in recent years of the evolution of Puigdemont’s formation since the independence movement without accidentalist or interventionist concessions in Spanish politics – such as those practiced by Convergència or the old Lliga – towards the pragmatism of concrete negotiations with the government in power in Madrid was possible if certain conditions were met. The first of them, the amnesty.
That is why in these months of high political tension in Spain due to this measure, the elite of the Catalan business community has played this card thoroughly, supporting it in practice without ever saying so publicly. And in these days of restless waiting until she knows Pedro Sánchez’s decision on her political future, she wishes, without almost daring to confess it to herself, in private, that the president opts for continuity in his position and discards the scare. Again, in contrast to the opinion of his peers in Madrid, who do not see the time for the socialist to leave Moncloa.
The implementation of the special grace measure, which is not firmly assured with a single vote in Congress, requires a government experienced in the matter and committed, ensuring control of the reins for at least one more year.
The calculation of the Catalan businessmen was that, in the short term, Junts could converge with Aitor Esteban’s PNV to form a conservative or liberal front, depending on taste, to counterbalance the economic policy of the alliance of the PSOE and Sumar in the form of coalition government. In the long run, have a political formation that fully assumes its economic postulates as its own, as with Pujol’s Convergència.
And this week in Congress two significant events have occurred, in the form of votes on non-law Propositions, which underpin this effort. One from Sumar defending the entry of unions into the boards of directors of companies. Another from the PP proposing that the Government not legislate on labor matters if there is no prior agreement between unions and employers. In both cases, the voting results have been favorable to business interests. Junts and PNV voted against the first, which was rejected; They abstained in the second, so it was approved.
And Sánchez Llibre took advantage of that result at the meeting of the executive of the CEOE, the large Spanish employers’ association chaired by Antonio Garamendi, when he was asked about his trip to France, two weeks ago, to meet with Puigdemont in his capacity as candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat. A public meeting for the first time, but one that had already been held privately several times before and for a long time. The proud Catalan defended before his colleagues from the employers’ association that those votes in Congress had been the result of his efforts with the independence leader.
And what is notable is that it received the tacit blessing of the rest of an executive who until recently had considered the amnesty the beginning of the end of the constitutional order. Nobody mentioned the bug during the meeting. Last page.
Until the emergence of Comet Sánchez and his meditations in Moncloa, a climate of marked optimism was detected among Catalan businessmen. Business is going well and the classic centers of power are emerging strongly again. Firstly, Isidre Fainé’s La Caixa, which is once again at the headquarters of Spanish business strategy. Family businesses exhibit new vigor, a notable example being Puig’s upcoming IPO.
The economic program illuminated by Junts, summarized in The first hundred days of government, includes many of its aspirations, especially those related to taxation, and ventures to propose the elimination of some of the current taxes (and that of wealth). And investment stimulus measures are proposed. What Artur Mas would call a business friendly program. Although he does not mention the expansion of the El Prat airport, one of his main concerns.
Meanwhile, in the pragmatic atmosphere in which Catalan businessmen operate, they combine their care in the birth of the pujolismo of the 21st century with the courtship of the socialists of Salvador Illa, the one in charge of putting an end to the absolute majorities of the independence movement in the Parliament, despite not agreeing with him on economic ideas. The letter to the Kings would include a Government pact between the PSC and Junts, despite knowing that the chances of it materializing are practically zero.
