History never repeats itself, but sometimes it trips over the same stone. With each passing day, it becomes clearer that Pedro Sánchez believed that the granting of pardons to the pro-independence leaders condemned by the Supreme Court was the solution to the conflict experienced in Catalonia since 2010. The Spanish president apparently confused what was a necessary condition to channel a way out of the territorial crisis with a supposedly sufficient condition to shelve the Catalan dispute, which, as we know, did not begin a decade ago. In another context, the popular Aznar mistakenly believed that with the Majestic pact the claims of political Catalanism would disappear.
The resounding lack of facts that can prove the oft-repeated "reunion agenda" calls into question Moncloa's commitment to Catalan society, not only to the independentistas. The poor figures of the investment executed by the central administration in Catalonia corresponding to the 2021 budgets – 35% – have fallen like a bucket of cold water, also among the economic elites, little suspected of complicity with the cause of secession. Before and after the procés, it has become the norm to fail to comply with what was agreed in the budgets. Disappointment has become entrenched, but now it has a higher density.
A simple review of the latest news tells us that cognitive dissonance (doing one thing and saying the other) is not an exclusive practice of a certain independence movement. Sánchez gave few and vague explanations about the spying scandal on Catalan and Basque politicians. The PSOE modified, at the last moment, the audiovisual law, breaking its agreement with ERC and other groups. The Minister of Finance has made it known that the fiscal balances will not be published. The frozen dialogue table has become a decoration for the theater of the absurd and the last Government-Government bilateral meeting yielded some joke results: the transfer of the old Turó de l'Home weather station, in Montseny, and the highway B-23.
In the judicial sphere, the review by the Supreme Court of pardons for the leaders of the procés, the shelving of the espionage case against Ernest Maragall and Roger Torrent (when he was president of Parliament), and the indictment of Carmen Cabezas and other charges of the Ministry of Health for the vaccination of Police officers and the Civil Guard are not situations that contribute to calm. The sentence that obliges to impose quotas of Castilian in the classrooms does not build harmony either.
The Majestic pact, which specified Jordi Pujol's support for Aznar to reach Moncloa after the 1996 generals, was a list that included several transfers, improved investments and the deployment of the Mossos, in addition to what was not it was written: deactivate offensives against the Catalan school model and the media of the Generalitat. Aznar complied and did so quickly. Those from CiU realized that they had not negotiated as well as they thought: the list should have been much longer and more ambitious, concluded Pujol. The peix al cove had bottomed out.
ERC is not CiU nor is Aragonès Pujol. The times are very different. But Sánchez has wanted to play with the pardons as Aznar played with the Majestic list. The leader of the PSOE has made a mistake. If it does not go further, if it does not specify, Catalan disaffection will persist, regardless of how well or how badly the pro-independence politicians govern.
