Around seven in the afternoon of October 1, the telephone of Esteban González Pons, MEP of the PP and vice-president of the Group of the EPP, begins to smoke. Several of his fellow caucuses, foreign MEPs from his group, call him under the impact of the images of police violence in Catalonia. They consider it impossible that the referendum will not be addressed in the plenary session of the European Parliament the following week.
The definitive call is from the German Manfred Weber. The situation is overflowing at times. González Pons communicates it to Rajoy. The debate on 1-O in Strasbourg seems inevitable. The Spanish Government is mobilized through the President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, founder of the Forza Italia party. González Pons proposes to change the wording of the point of debate and replace the reference to the referendum with one that deals with "Constitution and Rule of Law" in Spain.
Tajani makes arrangements to make it possible and, incidentally, also speaks with Italian journalists to clarify his point of view. The Spanish government gets the support of socialists and liberals. And even the acquiescence of Los Verdes and Izquierda Unitaria by adding the tagline "and fundamental rights." They also ensure that the debate takes place in such a way that each spokesperson can only intervene once, which prevents other Spanish MEPs from taking the floor and that the discussion is led to the issue of independence.
The debate will thus take place on October 4. Jorge Toledo, Secretary of State for the European Union, is planted in Brussels and displays a frenetic activity. Toledo, who later, under the government of Pedro Sánchez, would become the EU ambassador to China, works hard in the negotiations to limit the consequences of 1-O in the community institutions. Favors are asked of other countries. And the favors in Brussels always end up paying. Or exchanging, use whichever term you prefer.
The Executive does the work that it has hardly done in the last three years. Among the few sessions organized by the Spanish Government to explain its point of view to the foreign press regarding the Catalan conflict is a visit by Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, already Minister of Education, in May 2017, to Brussels, sent by Rajoy. The meeting with the informants was fatal for the interests of Madrid. Méndez de Vigo, a pro-European who knows the community framework, exposes legal and constitutional reasoning, but he meets journalists who constantly ask him about how to convey the expression of the feelings of thousands of Catalans who want to build their own country and about their right to decide at the polls.
But now the PP moves quickly. Immediately an alliance was established between the Spanish MEPs opposed to secession: the popular González Pons, the socialists Ramón Jáuregui and Iratxe García, and that of Ciudadanos, Javier Nart, attached to the liberals. This last case is not minor, since this group is chaired by Guy Verhofstadt, former Belgian Prime Minister of Flemish origin and with some sympathy for independence movements such as the Catalan one. Although Ernest Urtasun, from the commons, is attached to the Los Verdes group, he will not leave the request for dialogue and the criticism of the police charges. In fact, during the plenary session, only Nigel Farage, from the Brexit Party, will express his clear support for the separatists.
Rajoy's government thus averts the risk that the European Parliament ends up speaking in defense of a referendum or mediation that equates Catalonia and Spain as two entities with the same level of international recognition. But from that moment on, in Moncloa they know that the European flank is in a very weak situation. And they realize that they have only moved in the European Parliament and it is necessary to press the mood in another community institution, the Commission. And there they will have another surprise.
The President of the EC, Jean-Claude Juncker, is flying to India on October 4, 2017. In Brussels, he has left a speech for Vice President Frans Timmermans to read in his absence. The text has been written by Juncker's almighty chief of staff, the German Martin Selmayr, known as the Monster even by his own superior for his enormous capacity for work and control of everything that happens around him. the. Selmayr, who has been affected by European concern over the police violence on 1-O, has introduced a reference to the Catalan conflict into his speech.
Knowing all the ins and outs of the Commission, this senior official has a reputation for pulling the strings of the institution at will, for being a relentless negotiator, capable of driving even the most temperate out of their boxes. In the text that Juncker was to read, Selmayr has written that the European Commission is offering to mediate between Spain and Catalonia. And his boss has validated it before leaving on the trip. Socialists sound the alarm. They find out about that content because the speech is now in the hands of Timmermans, who belongs to his political group. They notify the popular group, which in turn telephones Madrid.
Jorge Toledo, together with Miguel Fernández Palacios, counselor for parliamentary affairs at the Permanent Representation of Spain to the European Union, and González Pons, go to Timmermans' office. There are two hours left to deliver the speech. A discussion begins to convince him to remove from the text the reference to a mediation between Catalonia and Spain. They warn him that this could cause a conflict of the first order between Madrid and Brussels.
Timmermans resists. Not so much because of the substance, but because he considers that his obligation is to act as a substitute for Juncker and, therefore, read the text as the president of the EC left it. But now it is impossible to contact him during the flight and a decision has to be made. The discussion escalates, ends up being very heated. At some point, the Spanish envoys are tempted to snatch the papers they are seeing on the table...
Finally, they achieve their goal. Timmermans yields and reads the speech with a veiled allusion to Catalonia, referring to the need to respect the Spanish Constitution. Both Selmayr and Juncker act moved by the impact of the images of 1-O. Nobody from the Rajoy government had had the foresight to telephone the president of the Commission after that day to influence his considerations about what had happened. When he lands in India, he is located and what happened is explained to him, Juncker gives his endorsement to the decision finally adopted.
From then on, the Rajoy Executive got down to work to ensure that no Parliament of a European country passes resolutions that could serve as support for Catalan independence. Denmark or the Baltic republics are of particular concern. Also Slovenia, which tends to identify itself with Catalonia. In many of these countries, the independence movement has done an exhaustive and fervent job of explaining its cause in recent years, so it is not easy to reverse the state of opinion of its political leaders. Other States, such as Germany or France, do not hesitate to support the Spanish Government.
The UK is a somewhat peculiar case. In community negotiations, all support has a price. So, when Spain asks the British for their support in this matter, London demands in exchange that Madrid agree to veto Scotland's eventual entry into the European Union. The express request is made by the British ambassador and he is guaranteed that it will be so. A year ago the referendum that endorses the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union took place. Brexit is in full negotiation and Scotland claims to remain under the community mantle and begins to ask for a new referendum on its independence. That is the context of the favor that London asks for and that is granted. In this frenetic activity to prevent international support for independence, even from an isolated country, the king's speech on October 3 is framed.
