It is pertinent to discuss, as has already been done, whether or not it is appropriate to speak now about the clarity agreement to lay the foundations for a referendum as proposed by the President of the Generalitat. Many citizens these days are more concerned about drought, housing problems, inflation or stagnant wages than about how to improve self-government. But in the same way, we believe that it is a mistake to stick to the speech that the man with the Catalan folder and Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, has been making for several days, when referring to this agreement on clarity as “going back to the past”.
It is Pedro Sánchez himself who admits that there is a political problem in Catalonia and that it must be resolved. What is the solution offered by the Government? In some public statements, socialist leaders such as Salvador Illa have spoken out for an improvement in self-government that could be endorsed in a consultation, always in agreement with the central Executive. The proposal that Pere Aragonès is proposing now resembles him and has nothing to do with the 1-O referendum, which was imposed by the pro-independence parliamentary majority and without the support of the Government. Aragonès promotes a commission made up of pro-independence academics and others who are not, whose conclusions will be debated with the parliamentary groups – yes: Vox is left out – and the final result would end in a referendum agreed with the central government.
Bolaños says that he rejects formulas that divided and confronted the Catalans and "that led Catalonia to enter a loop that lasted a decade." And we agree, but what is now on the table is not a unilateral proposal, and it even includes one of the requests that the PSC had always raised: that there be a kind of table of Catalan parties to talk about the issue. The Government would have to give some way out to the more pactista Catalan independence movement than not to speak euphemistically of dialogue without reaching any clear concretion.
