If the leaders of Junts insist on anything, it is the enormous mistrust they say they feel towards the PSOE. So much so that they did not hesitate to express it during their contacts with the PP. It’s not that they proclaimed a blind faith in the populists, but they did reveal to them that, in their opinion, they were more reliable, and that finding a solution to the Catalan conflict requires involving the PP. For the management of Junts, an agreement with the conservatives seems more difficult to achieve, but it would be more effective and viable. In any case, any understanding of this type collides at the moment with the dependence that the PP has on Vox to govern. It is impossible for the party of Alberto Núñez Feijóo to combine the ultra-right with the PNB and Junts in the same equation. That is why the PP, for the moment, continues to focus on the competition with Vox to the point of considering the illegalization of parties that defend independence referendums.
As long as the correlation of forces continues like this, the understanding between the PP and Junts will have to wait. The political landscape could change if Vox falls or if in a while, a year or perhaps halfway through the legislature, Carles Puigdemont forces an electoral advance if he considers that there has been no progress in his negotiations with the PSOE to continue maintaining Pedro Sánchez in Moncloa. In any case, this would not happen before the amnesty law is approved and implemented, which will take several months to receive the approval of the Courts, and even longer to wait for the decision of the Court of Justice of the EU, to which the Supreme Court will surely appeal before applying the law in the cases in which it is competent, such as that of Puigdemont himself.
For now, Junts and the PSOE are condemned to understand each other, but this relationship will not be easy, as is already being shown by the refusal of the post-convergents to approve several decrees of the Central Government that include from the increase in pensions to limits to evictions, passing through improvements in unemployment benefits, but which also foresee tweaks in the field of justice that Junts considers to hinder the application of the amnesty and other issues that, in their opinion, encroach on the competences of The Generalitat.
We are just at the first bend in the PSOE’s parliamentary relationship with its new partners and they all want to mark the ground. The point of disagreement with Junts is an article in which it is established that cases in which a judge raises a preliminary question in the European courts are paralyzed pending the answer. In reality, this usually already happens, as advocated by the Socialists, who add that collecting it legally is now one of the demands of the EU to collect more recovery funds. Junts maintains that it can be done later and that it is a candy that the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, wants to offer the judges to reconcile them with the Sánchez Government.
The fact is that Junts has already put Bolaños in the spotlight. The minister was the milker of most of the agreements with ERC, which is more than enough reason for Puigdemont’s people to distrust him. But, in addition, he was the one who flatly refused to include in the amnesty law the reference to law fare, which in the end was left in the political agreement between the two parties. Together, the relationship with Santos Cerdán, secretary of organization of the PSOE, is more appreciated.
It took a lot for the socialists to establish a relationship of trust with ERC, but in the end they succeeded. With Junts this is unlikely to happen. For several reasons: first, there is more ideological distance. Second, one of the motivations of Junts is to leave ERC in evidence as a party that has allowed itself to be taken by Sánchez, which always forces Junts to be more demanding. And third, there will come a time when it will be clear that the PSOE cannot satisfy Puigdemont’s aspirations.
In Junts, the Convergence gene lives on, always reluctant to approach the socialists. But, in addition, the current leadership is even more refractory, because Puigdemont’s main goal is not only to get more power for the party, but is always focused on the ultimate goal of independence.
That is why it is not surprising that Puigdemont does not want the relationship with the PSOE to go further. Together, he avoided the pact with the Catalan socialists in several delegations and now it is difficult for an agreement to materialize in the Barcelona City Council. Despite the fact that Xavier Trias and some of his collaborators are advocating to enter the municipal government of Jaume Collboni, they do not see it clearly in the current direction of Junts. Puigdemont has always wanted to have his hands as free as possible in his relationship with the socialists. For this reason, despite Junts’ anger at having been ousted from the mayoralty of Barcelona, ??the ex-president did not go so far as to propose to the PSOE as a condition for Sánchez’s investiture a pact to share it.
Once the amnesty law is applied, the success or failure of the turn decided by Puigdemont in favor of dialogue will depend on the results of the open negotiation table with the PSOE, which will hardly find relevant points of agreement, as it has already past with ERC. Along the way, the result of the Catalan elections will represent a turning point. These are the milestones that will mark the relationship between the PSOE and Junts and, therefore, the Spanish legislature, and which allow us to see that the alliance with Junts will be much stronger than the one maintained so far with ERC.
