If the Junts leaders insist on something, it is the enormous distrust they claim to harbor in the PSOE. So much so that they did not hesitate to express it during their contacts with the PP. It is not that they proclaimed blind faith in the Popular Party, but they did confess to them that, in their opinion, they were more reliable and that finding a solution to the Catalan conflict involves involving the PP. For the Junts management, an agreement with the conservatives seems more difficult to reach, but it would be more effective and viable. In any case, any understanding of this type currently clashes with the dependence that the PP has on Vox to govern. It is impossible for Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party to combine the extreme right with the PNV and Junts in the same equation. Hence, the PP, for the moment, continues to concentrate on the competition with Vox to the point of proposing the illegalization of parties that defend independence referendums.
As long as the correlation of forces continues like this, the agreement between the PP and Junts will have to wait. The political panorama could vary if Vox falls or if within a while, a year or perhaps in the middle of the legislature, Carles Puigdemont forces an electoral advance if he considers that there has been no progress in his negotiations with the PSOE enough to continue keeping Pedro Sánchez in the Moncloa. In any case, not before the amnesty law is approved and applied, which will require a few months to receive the green light from the Cortes and even more time to wait for the decision of the Court of Justice of the EU, which will surely that the Supreme Court will appeal before applying the law in cases within its jurisdiction, such as that of Puigdemont himself.
For now, Junts and PSOE are condemned to understand each other, but that relationship is not going to be easy, as is already becoming evident with the refusal of the post-convergents to approve several Government decrees that include everything from raising pensions to limits evictions through improvements in unemployment benefits, but which also foresee adjustments in the field of justice that Junts considers hinder the application of the amnesty and other matters that, in its opinion, invade the powers of the Generalitat.
We are right at the first curve of the parliamentary relationship of the PSOE with its new partners and everyone wants to mark the ground. The point of contention with Junts is an article in which cases in which a judge raises a preliminary question to the European courts are expected to be paralyzed pending a response. In reality, this already usually happens, as defended by the socialists, who add that collecting it legally is now one of the EU's demands to collect more recovery funds. Junts maintains that it can be done later and that it is a candy that the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños, wants to offer the judges to reconcile them with the Government.
The fact is that Junts has already put Bolaños in its sights. The minister was the designer of most of the agreements with ERC, which is more than enough reason for Puigdemont's people to be suspicious of him. But he was also the one who flatly refused to include in the amnesty law the reference to law fare, which in the end was left in the political agreement between the two parties. Junts prefers the deal with Santos Cerdán, organizational secretary of the PSOE.
It was difficult for the socialists to establish a relationship of trust with ERC, but in the end they succeeded. With Junts it is unlikely that this will happen. For several reasons: first, there is a greater ideological distance. Second, one of Junts' motivations is to expose ERC, as a party that has allowed itself to be fooled by Sánchez, which always forces Junts to be more demanding. And third, there will come a time when it is evident that the PSOE will not be able to satisfy Puigdemont's aspirations.
In Junts the Convergència gene survives, always reluctant to get closer to the socialists. But the current leadership is even more refractory because Puigdemont's main objective is not only to obtain more power for the party, but his goal is always focused on the ultimate goal of independence.
Therefore, it is not surprising that Puigdemont does not want the relationship with the PSOE to go further. Junts avoided the pact with the Catalan socialists in several deputations and now it is difficult for an agreement to materialize in Barcelona City Council. Although Xavier Trias and some of his collaborators advocate entering the municipal government of Jaume Collboni, the current Junts leadership does not see it clear. Puigdemont has always wanted to have as free a hand as possible in his relationship with the socialists. Hence, despite Junts' anger at having been ousted from the Barcelona mayor's office, the former president did not propose to the PSOE as a condition for Sánchez's investiture an agreement to share the mayor's office.
Once the amnesty law is applied, the success or failure of the turn decided by Puigdemont in favor of dialogue will depend on the results of the open negotiation table with the PSOE, which will hardly find relevant points of agreement, as has already happened with ERC. . Along the way, the result of the Catalan elections will represent a turning point. These are the milestones that will mark the relationship between the PSOE and Junts and, therefore, the Spanish legislature, and which allow us to glimpse that the alliance with Junts is going to be much more tense than the one maintained until now with ERC.
