Tell me who you go with, and I’ll tell you who you are… The cruelty of the proverb has been rampant in the PP since La Vanguardia revealed where and with whom he met to explore the possibilities of a rapprochement with Junts in this legislature
It was already known that there had been contacts with the formation of Carles Puigdemont and the president of the PP himself, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, confirmed them in October, during one of his hectic visits to Catalonia, but suddenly it became known that his confidant in Barcelona, ??Daniel Sirera, had met with Josep Rius and Albert Batet in August at a hotel reservation fell like a bomb on Génova street in Madrid.
On the agenda of the PP for that day, Wednesday, January 3, there was written in red the presentation of the amendment to the entirety of the amnesty law, which was overshadowed by the uproar that raised the news of the meeting between Sirera and adviser Xavier Domínguez, the consultant who designed part of the PP campaign for the generals, with two Junts representatives as close to Puigdemont as Batet and Rius.
The spokesperson of the PP in Congress, Miguel Tellado, dedicated the press conference to trying to put out the fire by reducing the meeting to a simple coffee and was forced to correct himself after having denied it hours before that he was aware of the facts: “Politicians sometimes drink coffee with members of other parties… You have to see it with the normality that entails”, he admitted.
But as much as this coffee, which was not even a coffee according to Sirera, who ordered a mineral water, wanted to dissolve between the multiple meetings of the public officials, the expansive wave of the scandal extended to shake the weak structure of the PP of Catalonia, always under the threat of collapse due to its internal afflictions.
“You cannot say that you want to outlaw anti-constitutional parties – as the PP proposes in its alternative text to the amnesty law – on the same day that it is known that you meet with one of them”, explains a source from the leadership in Catalonia.
The councilor in Barcelona stepped out assuring that he did not negotiate anything and that in any case the PP rejected Junts’ conditions, which then accepted the PSOE so that Pedro Sánchez would retain the presidency, but among his colleagues has again demonstrated the division between the two souls of the party in Catalonia.
The Catalan PP still has its postponed regional congress in 2024 without any of the aspirants to replace Alejandro Fernández having dared to apply openly, despite the fact that in the area of ??Feijóo he has very few supporters and it is considered that a renewal is necessary.
On the other hand, Fernández’s supporters consider that the facts reinforce the theses of the current president, who confronted the state leadership in the summer to claim more autonomy and question the “bazegades” in the strategy of alliances. The most reluctant militancy to agree with the nationalists second it: “The parameters of, which speaks of a fascist state, of lawfare, etcetera, are incompatible with political dialogue”, they defend in Fernández’s environment.
Basically, what we are talking about is elucidating when the PP will be able to negotiate with Junts without fracturing, both in Catalonia and in Spain, where it holds the key to governability. For the current leadership of the Catalan PP, the time has not come, not even remotely. But from the Feijóo executive, approaches began, led by Esteban González Pons and Elías Bendodo.
Although in the medium term they may produce results, the fear of some leaders is that these movements will be instrumentalized by Junts and filtered according to the interests of Puigdemont and his: “All those who approach him end up scalded, Pedro Sánchez will be the next”, they say.
With Núñez Feijóo playing the dubious role of Hamlet, in this ideological crossroad the supporters of exploring the path of Together and those opposed to entering a “swampy territory” after the disappearance of Convergència bifurcate. And this has a state translation. On one side, the followers of belligerent barons, such as Isabel Díaz Ayuso from Madrid, are lining up, and on the other, the conciliators, who have the Andalusian Juanma Moreno, who on Thursday “firmly” condemned the beating of the piñata de Sánchez, his adalil.
