The approach of the PP to Junts, “a party with a tradition and legality that are not in doubt”, as Esteban González Pons affirmed yesterday to justify the start of the uncertain and hesitant negotiations with the formation of Carles Puigdemont , opens old wounds among the popular Catalans, who do not have a unanimous position on what is the relationship that must be maintained with the independence of the convergent matrix.
There was a time when the harmony of the PP with Jordi Pujol and later with Artur Mas was good and the “programmatic coincidences” referred to yesterday by the MEP and deputy secretary of institutional action in Alberto’s executive Núñez Feijóo prevailed over differences in identity and territorial issues. But the Tinell pact and the pro-independence process dynamited the bridges that would now need to be rebuilt very quickly so that the PP candidate’s investiture can go ahead.
Although politics, as the general coordinator of the PP, Elías Bendodo, also said yesterday, “is the art of the possible, and this can only be achieved with dialogue, without walls or trenches”, the reality is seen differently from Catalonia , scene of the social fracture that five years ago triggered the unilateral declaration of independence by the then president Puigdemont.
The idea of ??sitting down to negotiate with Junts has always been viewed with caution by the president of the PP of Catalonia, Alejandro Fernández, who fears that the party, which was at a minimum due to the rise of Ciutadans, will again fall between the paws of the horses now that he was beginning to recover. In addition, the main beneficiary of this hypothetical understanding with conservative sovereignty would be Vox, which already has much more strength in Parliament than the popular ones.
Be that as it may, if Feijóo talks to Puigdemont and in the end the former president reaches an agreement with the PSOE that allows Pedro Sánchez to continue in Moncloa, the position of the PP in Catalonia will be greatly affected. “If you accuse Sánchez of negotiating with a fugitive from justice, you cannot do the same, unless you assume Sanchism as a method”, warned Fernández a few days ago to categorically discard the pact with Junts.
Nevertheless, there is a current of the Catalan PP that advocates an opening towards moderate Catalanism and that raises its voice more and more strongly as the crisis of the process recedes over time, and while some fragments of the explosion of CiU intend to unite in a new centre-right project.
This was already sensed in the candidacy for the mayor of Barcelona, ??which included members of the Democratic League, promoter of the pardons to the leaders of the 1-O. Daniel Sirera, who in the end opted for the socialist Jaume Collboni, would have Xavier Trias, from Junts, was also able to make mayor, with whom the leader of the municipal group of the PP had conversations.
“Only the right can propose a well-done amnesty and a constitutional referendum without going to civil war”, says a source in this sector.
