Government and Generalitat guarantee stability and majority to address reforms

Putting black on white every word and every comma in a document with the letterhead of the Government of Spain and the Generalitat de Catalunya costs blood, sweat and tears, as both parties admit.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
27 July 2022 Wednesday 16:48
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Government and Generalitat guarantee stability and majority to address reforms

Putting black on white every word and every comma in a document with the letterhead of the Government of Spain and the Generalitat de Catalunya costs blood, sweat and tears, as both parties admit. And it is not for less, after ten years of the independence process, from its already distant precedents to some disastrous consequences that are still being paid, and the espionage scandal against the independence movement that just three months ago threatened to blow up all the bridges of dialogue again .

The commitment of Pedro Sánchez and Pere Aragonès through politics in the face of the conflict, reaffirmed at their last meeting in Moncloa on July 15, after two arduous preparatory meetings with Félix Bolaños and Laura Vilagrà, managed to begin to recompose the broken plates.

The rehabilitated dialogue and negotiation table between the two governments, despite the powerful enemies it has both in Spain and in Catalonia and who persevere to derail it, yesterday managed to seal its first two agreements on overcoming judicial conflicts and on defense from Catalan.

The progress of the dialogue table also serves to define the political scenario in the coming months, with a guarantee of mutual stability both for the Spanish Executive, which needs the support of the Republicans, and for ERC in Catalonia. The relationship of this formation with JxCat in the Government is arduous, with confrontations exemplified in Junts' decision not to go to the dialogue table and form a divergent and critical strategy.

There was satisfaction yesterday in the two delegations that participated in the table to understand that, despite different political demands, agreements have been launched with specificities but that also frame a path to travel politically.

An agreement for "the protection and promotion of the Catalan language", and another to "overcome judicialization and reinforce guarantees". Two documents, of three pages and a page and a half respectively, that emanated from the meeting that, after the intense negotiations of the last two weeks, were sealed by the representatives of both delegations in a meeting that lasted for one hour and forty-five minutes, again in Moncloa.

“Today we abandon monologues and the attempt to impose the other, and embrace agreements and dialogue, as a way of doing useful politics”, celebrated the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, who led the Government delegation, at the end of the meeting. , also made up of Vice President Yolanda Díaz and Ministers Isabel Rodríguez and Miquel Iceta. The two agreements, Bolaños stressed, "respond to a broad and transversal majority of Catalan society that leaves behind the blocs that seemed irreconcilable a short time ago."

The Minister of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrà –at the head of a Government delegation made up of Roger Torrent, Joan Ignasi Elena and Natàlia Garriga, and which Junts refused to join–, also stressed that the first specific agreements emerged from this meeting to overcome the judicialization of Catalan politics and retrace the political conflict, and also stressed that the solution lies in the construction of a large majority.

In Moncloa they highlight La Vanguardia as the most relevant points of the agreement to overcome the judicialization of the political conflict that the Government commits in writing to develop its political and institutional activity always within the legal framework, that it assumes the reform procedures already established in the law and the commitment to advance with agreements that represent a broad and transversal majority in the social and parliamentary sphere. All this, in the opinion of the Government, implies "the end of unilateralism" that promoted the independence process.

As for the agreement for the protection and promotion of the Catalan language, in Moncloa they highlight the last point of the document, which extends its scope to the rest of the official languages ​​of the State other than Spanish, that is, Basque and Galician, if this is also required by their regional governments.

In the field of defense of the Catalan language, the Pere Aragonès Executive particularly valued the agreement on the use of Catalan in education, understanding that the document shields the bet - embodied in the law approved this year in Parliament with vast majority – to exceed the imposition of 25% Spanish required by the TSJC. Moncloa's opinion on shielding is not the same, but the line of language policy marked by the document is.

The Government stressed the importance of setting the date for this year to carry out the reforms to overcome the judicialization of the procés. Some reforms that will involve changes in the Penal Code.

The differences with Junts were already expressed shortly after the dialogue table ended. The spokesman Josep Rius asked President Aragonès to explain in parliamentary headquarters "the drift that he is taking" the dialogue table since he "is moving away" from his initial objective of achieving amnesty and the right to self-determination. Also from the CUP it was considered that the conflict is no longer approached from this perspective.

Criticism came like this from several flanks. The PP spokeswoman, Cuca Gamarra, accused Sánchez of "renouncing the application of the law" with the independentistas and, likewise, considered that he denies "the equality of Spaniards to study in Castilian." Ciudadanos called the meeting a "blackmail table" pointing out that the system is based on the rule of law and the separation of powers.

The table will sit down predictably next fall.