Today's will not be the first meeting between Pedro Sánchez and Pere Aragonès since the espionage crisis broke out a few months ago against the pro-independence leaders, but it will be the first time since then that both leaders will be able to sit down to talk face to face , long and hard, of all this, and how to reshape the dialogue between governments that designed Esquerra Republicana and the PSOE at the beginning of the Spanish legislature.
Today's appointment in Moncloa is preceded by three meetings between the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, and the Minister of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrà, who have cleared the way with two appointments in Barcelona and one in Madrid. A week ago, both leaders sealed an agreement that defines for the first time the framework and methodology of the dialogue.
Aragonès goes to Moncloa, to a meeting that is expected to last about two hours, with the desire to gauge what the real will of the head of the central Executive is with dialogue, sources from the Generalitat point out. The president intends to obtain "a framework of guarantees" for the negotiation, since to restore trust, actions are required and not just commitments and words, these sources point out.
But the expectations "are very low", as the spokeswoman for the Government, Patrícia Plaja, already pointed out last Tuesday at the press conference after the meeting of the Consell Executiu. "We know where we come from and we carry a backpack of non-compliance, that is why guarantees and facts are required," point out the sources consulted, who believe that it is necessary to obtain from the meeting a clear commitment from the President of the Government with the dialogue roadmap .
The requests of the Government have not changed in all this time: self-determination, through an agreed referendum, and amnesty. But these will not be the issues that occupy the time of the presidents only. Although it is not on the agenda, Plaja said on Tuesday that in all probability the espionage of the independence movement will be addressed. "It is one of the issues that has broken and strained relations between the Government and the Government the most in recent months. Minister Félix Bolaños and Minister Laura Vilagrà have already discussed it. It is not on the agenda, but it is difficult think that it will not be talked about," said the spokeswoman, who also acknowledged that "expectations are not high because relationships of trust are diminished". "But it is important because it will be seen if there is a change in the Spanish government in relation to Catalonia," she countered.
"The situation of the relations between the two governments will be addressed, relations are not normalized or even close to being. The guarantees required by the Government and the dejudicialization folder will also be discussed," Plaja summed up, who believes that "it is not a meeting for the photo" but a "meeting from which concrete results are going to be demanded".
The fact that there are few prospects for the meeting does not prevent the Catalan Executive from waiting for "a turning point", as Aragonès said on Onda Cero on Monday, and from wanting to leave Moncloa with " concrete results" in the bag. Although that does not imply that a date is set for the next meeting between governments, since for this there must be content and agreements to seal and that, all the actors point out, requires discreet prior work. At that point they coincide both in Madrid and in Barcelona.
"Concretions, results and that calendars are marked", Vilagrà said yesterday in a visit to Roda de Ter. "We will not hold a dialogue table just to do it, an empty dialogue table, but when there are tangible results to explain," added the Republican minister. In that sense, Bolaños said on TVE that today's appointment is "important" because it responds to "a firm commitment to dialogue." Regarding the dates, like Vilagrà, he stressed that "more than dates, the way we work is to work on content and once we have the agreement, organize a table and from there make the agreement public".
"We said that we would negotiate a lot, that we would do it in public and private meetings and that is what we are doing," he remarked. "There is no other way to solve the political problem that exists in Catalonia. We have to look each other in the face and look for meeting points," she concluded.
Thus, despite the fact that the Catalan aspiration is maximum and does not change, in the Government they are aware that the two folders that they put on the table have different rhythms and that the one in which progress can be made first and most tangible is in the so-called "dejudicialization" folder.
That is why Aragonès said this week that the priority is to draw up "concrete measures that reverse the repression." "Beyond the good words that we may hear, beyond generic commitments, the importance is the concrete steps. Therefore, the result of this meeting and those that have to come will be measured by the concrete steps and commitments", the president warned.
However, Minister Bolaños said last Sunday that there are no parliamentary majorities to reformulate the crimes of sedition and rebellion in the Penal Code, something that Minister Miquel Iceta, Minister of Culture, does not see as such. The matter is not yet on the table, but it is one of the aspects on which there may be agreement in the future.
In the Catalan Executive they do not see this far-reaching reform viable in the short term, so they trust that they will be able to advance first on issues or legal modifications that are easier to navigate, such as in the legal cases opened against lower-ranking independence leaders, the Court of Accounts , the renewal of the Constitutional or others.
Be that as it may, before the appointment Esquerra and PSOE have moved closer in Congress, in the votes that took place yesterday, while Junts per Catalunya has distanced itself from the relaxation that they attribute to the need for Sánchez, after the poor results of the socialists in Andalusia, to reconfigure a stable parliamentary majority. After the approval of the general State budgets for next year and at the gates of the 2023 electoral cycle, it will be difficult to think that there will be more meetings of the dialogue table beyond Christmas, JxCat sources point out.
Esquerra's partner in the Government distances himself from the dialogue if there are no real guarantees of compliance with what was agreed upon and that the approval of an amnesty law in the remaining year of the legislature and the approval of a an agreed and recognized self-determination referendum. The vice president and spokesman for the formation, Josep Rius, said this week that without a framework of trust it is unfeasible to resume dialogue and for this he demanded that the creation of an investigation commission on espionage with the Pegasus program be approved in the Lower House to independence.
The meeting, which will start at 11:30 a.m. in Moncloa, in the opinion of the Catalan Executive is late and should have taken place weeks or months ago. The truth is that the dialogue between the two administrations has been frozen for almost a year, when the Prime Minister went to Barcelona. The first ones who put it in the fridge were the Socialists, and they finished cooling it from the Government as a result of the Catalangate, although in recent weeks the matter has been revived by both governments to make a virtue of necessity.
No one is unaware that the two presidents need to breathe air into their respective legislatures, Sánchez to conclude with a stable majority that allows him to approve general state budgets in a context of crisis and runaway inflation. And Aragonès, who has barely been at the helm of the Government for a year, needs his training strategy, the commitment to dialogue against all odds and together, to start giving visible results.
In the last appointment JxCat was absent by not appointing a delegation made up exclusively of members of the Government, as demanded by Aragonès, whom they accuse of vetoing their negotiators. Nothing foreshadows that it will be different in the rest of the meetings that may take place this year, no matter how much ERC urges its partner not to weaken that forum that only the Republicans support in the face of the skepticism of the postconvergents and the CUP.
