Booked from a restaurant in Barcelona. Carles Puigdemont on a computer screen. On the other side, Junts’ number two, Jordi Turull, together with one of the trusted men of the ex-president and parliamentary spokesman, Albert Batet. The remote lunch took place yesterday, prior to the executive of the formation that holds the key to make Pedro Sánchez president or to repeat the elections. If anyone has any doubts about who is the one who sets the position in Junts, they can already solve it.
The ex-president’s surroundings were euphoric yesterday with the interest that Puigdemont suddenly awakens in Madrid. For years together, he has not had a stable interlocution and of a certain level in Moncloa, since any contact aroused the suspicions of ERC, which immediately required the exclusive attention of PSOE. Puigdemont will try to make the Republicans and Sánchez himself pay for these insolences. The result of Junts has not been good (it has lost one seat, 137,000 votes and it has not passed ERC), but it gives it a valuable role.
The possibilities of reaching an agreement are limited. Puigdemont has been announcing the clash with the State for six years, and he is not one to change his mind easily. Accumulates reproaches against those who have agreed with the supposed enemy (ERC and PDECat) and also against Sánchez. And he has always made it clear that he is not looking for a solution to his personal situation.
It is true that the opportunity comes at the worst time. His party has lost several places of power and the General Court of the EU has just removed his immunity from the European Parliament, so he does not attend, at least, the sessions in Strasbourg to avoid possible arrest if he leaves Belgium. In accordance with this ruling, the Prosecutor’s Office suddenly asked the Supreme Court yesterday to reactivate the European arrest warrant for the ex-president from the Belgian authorities as soon as possible. The extradition request would place Puigdemont in front of Spanish public opinion as a fugitive from justice who is negotiating with Sánchez, while Alberto Núñez Feijóo will insist that the PSOE let him govern with an abstention. However, it is likely that Judge Pablo Llarena will wait for the higher European instance, the CJEU, to decide on the appeal that the former president has already announced.
The million dollar question is what Puigdemont will do. Sumar announced yesterday that the ex-deputy of the commons Jaume Asens is in talks with Watterloo to get his support. Asens maintains a good relationship with one of the expatriate councillors, Toni Comín, and was an essential piece when members of the Government of the Generalitat escaped to Belgium in 2017. But the former president will want a more direct dialogue with Moncloa.
The starting point is to demand amnesty and the self-determination referendum. The course of this second demand is rather null, beyond the commitment that already exists to submit to a vote the agreement that can be reached at the dialogue table between the Catalan and central governments. For Moncloa, viable talks would focus on the first of the demands, even if it is called in a different way. It would be about exploring a legal formula to avoid new imprisonments as a result of the process. In this sense, Puigdemont will notice the pressure from those who are at risk of ending up in prison and who now see an opportunity to find a way out of their situation.
The former president is not very permeable to pressure. He demonstrated this in 2017, when they demanded that he call elections instead of the unilateral declaration of independence. It will be difficult for him to come to a more compromising position. It would only be feasible if he reaches an agreement with the PSOE that justifies his choice for “exile” and that leaves the strategy followed by ERC in evidence before the pro-independence electorate.
How far will Sánchez be willing to go? At the moment, caution is required in Moncloa. Yolanda Díaz will start doing “pedagogy” defending an exit for the leaders of the process pending trial. Salvador Illa has also been building bridges with Junts, despite the clash over the mayorship of Barcelona.
Sánchez was well aware for some time that his chances of continuing at Moncloa could depend on Junts. First he waited for the party to experience a pragmatic turn which did not end up arriving. Despite the internal tensions in Junts, Puigdemont’s position has always been decisive. So the electoral repetition is a feasible scenario.
In Catalonia the PSC got 1.1 million votes, while ERC and Junts got 823,000 ballots. Although the useful vote to slow down the right has been crucial, in every election, the socialists consolidate in Catalonia and independence gives ground.
The Catalan political map reveals an obvious desire to avoid new convulsions. Not only because the PSC and ERC, which have been in dialogue to renew the conflict, together with Sumar, represent two million votes, but because the PP and Vox do not manage to take off in this territory. Popular parties have grown in Catalonia from two to six seats, but they were expecting a minimum of eight. The result denotes the perception among a good part of the voters that a government of the PP and Vox could return Catalonia to the tense moments of the past.
Meanwhile, Feijóo, as the winner of the elections, was trying to forge an impossible agreement in which Vox and the PNB shared space. In fact, the leader of the PP could only ask the King to instruct him to present himself for an investiture if he at least had the support of the extreme right, but this would already mean a tie that could take its toll in the event that Sánchez fails with Puigdemont and there is a need to go to a repeat election. Feijóo’s options are limited. The popular ones have the advantage of the D’Hondt law, since they have obtained just over 300,000 more votes which have translated into no less than 14 more seats. But its disadvantage is the lack of possible parliamentary allies and the incompatibility of these allies with each other.
The 23-J shows that we are not dealing with a bloc of the left and one of the right that aspire to govern. The axis that marks the pacts is territorial, since the time of Jordi Pujol. The PP barely has allies of regional allegiance (only the Canary Islands and Navarre), while the PSOE has more options. The discourse that drives the vote, since 2017, is also that of the relationship with independence, whether Basque or Catalan. This is the real pending issue of democratic functioning in Spain, the insertion of the role of the autonomies and their parties in the governance of Spain.