Esquerra was about to knock down the budgets in Congress for the audiovisual law; the republican threat was repeated in the Senate, he agreed in writing with the PSOE that the norm would only be negotiated with the ERC – “if not, it won't come out” –. And it was agreed, and ERC stuck out its chest... but the law has been approved thanks to the abstention of the PP. "We can't vote on this." Gabriel Rufián has become the spokesman for the ERC complaint and lament in Madrid. The commitments of the PSOE, like those of the CUP in Catalonia, mutate and tend to zero... it doesn't matter who negotiates: Nadia Calviño, Félix Bolaños, María Jesús Montero... they all participated in the mutating pact of the audiovisual law.
Can ERC trust Pedro Sánchez? Pere Aragonès has been demanding a proof of trust for a month that has not arrived. The relationship between his teams is frozen and now he is "poisoned". La Moncloa insists that it is working to recover the ERC as an ally at the same time that it accumulates votes hand in hand with the PP: the National Security Law, the audiovisual law and four other regulations have linked socialists and popular only "for reasons of State" , they maintain in the PP.
That is also where the veto of the investigation commission for espionage with Pegasus comes in and the certainty that Sánchez will seek the support of the PP to carry out the changes in the CNI law, even if he presented it as an offering to the ERC. Has variable geometry buried most of the investiture? No. Sánchez's needs are one thing and the progress program is another. Even United We Can suffer it. For ERC, the votes with the PP are "a mirage" that do not guarantee Sánchez the mandate, but have the virtue of making them less essential.
ERC linked its strategy to be a pro-independence paller to the agenda of the reunion of Sánchez, but the calendars are not the same: first the elections in Castilla y León, now Andalusia, "and later?". The needs are also not combined. The accumulation of successes that the “decisive CKD” hoped to exhibit in Congress is turning into an accumulation of problems that the Pegasus scandal has aggravated. Pegasus and the courts. The Celáa law pact has not shielded Catalan in education and the TSJC has in its hands to impose 25% of Spanish in the classrooms. Even the successes not claimed in public, such as the pardons of the procés leaders, are threatened in the Supreme Court by the retirement of magistrates.
In the Palau de la Generalitat they do not lose their calm. "They have the problem," they insist, but the "perpetual crisis" in which they have settled forces the Republicans to an uncertain navigation. Sánchez's explanations in Congress about espionage are "very insufficient" for Aragonès and the generalized "inaction" in the relationship between administrations "goes against common sense", warns the Government.
The meeting between presidents is still not scheduled, but time does not have to run in favor of the PSOE. That Aragonès does not make noise does not mean that he buries the issue. The president does not want to "meet at any price" with Sánchez and ERC has no incentive to grease the relationship with the PSOE. There are mobile analyzes of ERC leaders pending to be made public and the Pegasus investigation commission of the European Parliament prepares its visit to Spain.
Sánchez tries to turn and go on the attack against the PP for the Villarejo and Kitchen case, and Rufián points to Waterloo… Junts hyperventilates and, incidentally, makes the common people uncomfortable. Jaume Asens smiled nervously when the ERC spokesman from the stands told him “don't go to Waterloo so much” but the message that Carles Puigdemont sent to Aragonès had little of a smile and a lot of reproach. Then came the calls in the coordination groups between ERC and Junts, the discomfort in Palau, the staging of Laura Borràs, Jordi Puigneró and Albert Batet in front of Aragonès at the end of the plenary session of the Parlament... and back again.
Junts thought that the Catalangate justified the pro-independence confrontation, but there is no change in the pragmatism of ERC. Getting up from the table would be assuming Junts' self-fulfilling prophecy about the failure of the dialogue, despite the fact that the Republicans succumb to mistrust and – in the words of Rufián – Sánchez's “permanent blackmail”.
