The negotiations between the PSOE and Junts for the amnesty and the investiture of Pedro Sánchez are advancing, but at the moment there is no white smoke or imminent agreement. This time the European Parliament has been the chosen setting. On the one hand, the number three of the socialist party, Santos Cerdán, who landed in Brussels on Thursday night, arrived at the institution this Friday morning. In turn, the former president, Carles Puigdemont, present in the same building, has met “internally” with the general secretary of the party, Jordi Turull, and the party's spokesperson in Congress, Míriam Nogueras, in his office , without there being a face-to-face meeting between both parties.
Sources familiar with the negotiation assure that the discussions “are very much alive,” but that they are technically very complex, although they insist that they are being developed “with the utmost discretion.” “The texts are very advanced, but not closed, with very complex wordings,” both at a legal and political level, they add. The same sources confirm that both groups have exchanged roles and calls, as has been done for weeks, but this Friday, the sources assured "that it is still early" to close an agreement, given negotiations very focused on technical issues, in which “names are not talked about.” Nobody wants to set deadlines. "It can be closed today, tomorrow, the day after or Tuesday, we'll see," says another source familiar with the situation.
The only thing clear is that on both sides there is a will to reach an agreement, but both parties reject the deadlines that had been planned, despite the pressure of the recent announcements between the PSOE and ERC, because – they allege – until the On November 27, there is time to close the necessary details and hold the investiture debate.
The expectation of an imminent agreement was maximum in Brussels, after the Junts leadership met yesterday in a hotel in the European neighborhood of the Belgian capital to analyze the negotiations with the socialists. A room was prepared for an appearance that was dismantled after a few hours. The media presence in the European Parliament has clearly bothered the parties, who have seen how the discretion they have wanted to maintain until now has become an impossible mission. The truth is that from last August until just a few days ago the conversations between post-convergents and socialists had taken place in privacy and with discretion, a fact that, in the opinion of the negotiators, benefits the dialogue.
What has emerged, after Puigdemont's message last night in which he pointed out that "all caution is too little" when negotiating with the PSOE, is that the agreement closed by ERC with the PSOE does not please Junts. The general secretary of the party has asked his party colleagues to "calm down" so as not to leave anyone stranded in the amnesty negotiation. Even some member of the Lower House such as Isidre Gavín, parliamentarian for Lleida, has criticized the Republicans' pact in relation to the transfer of Rodalies, which Oriol Junqueras's party calls "comprehensive" although it does not include all the lines or infrastructure. Gavín had been a leader in the Department of Territory.
The technical obstacles to the amnesty include, among other issues, the Voloh case that has been under investigation by a court of first instance in Barcelona for several years.
Be that as it may, in case of agreement, JxCat must call an extraordinary meeting of the national council 24 hours in advance. This Thursday, the members of the party's highest leadership body had been warned between congresses to be available for this weekend, but today, Friday, they have no longer received any instructions.
