"Nothing, nothing, nothing." No meetings, no exchange of documents. The pro-independence common front between Junts and ERC to negotiate a hypothetical investiture of Pedro Sánchez does not exist and is not being forged, if not quite the opposite. The distrust between the two formations continues and despite public appeals there has been no progress since 23-J and it is not expected that there will be, according to sources familiar with the contacts. The fluid personal relationship between Jordi Turull and Marta Rovira is not synonymous with a political approach. "We will not enter the investiture game with them hand in hand," they maintain in the post-convergent leadership.
Junts is comfortable in silence under the spotlight, while ERC has already advanced in its negotiation with the PSOE for the vote on Thursday in which the Congress Table will be constituted. The Republicans have publicly stated that they guarantee their vote for the PSOE, whoever the president of the Chamber is, and they take it for granted to maintain the parliamentary group and even claim the presidency of some commission. Meanwhile, in Junts, they avoid speaking out, but they do stress that ERC's explicit position does not allow any negotiation. "So there is no margin," they conclude.
After 23-J, Junts raised the convenience of establishing a common pro-independence strategy and its leaders contacted the ERC, the CUP and social entities. However, the objective was not to establish a minimum common denominator to sit down to negotiate the investiture of Sánchez, but rather a more far-reaching roadmap. According to the aforementioned sources, these contacts have not gone further.
In the Palau de la Generalitat they defended that Junts and ERC should go hand in hand to avoid PSOE operations through the back door, but the post-convergents maintain that "ERC's discourse goes one way and the facts on the other." And there they appear from the ERC's refusal to form a joint front in Congress in the last legislature, to the ERC pacts with the PSC in the Lleida and Tarragona councils.
"What we end up doing will be done directly by us," they settle. The Republicans, as Teresa Jordà pointed out this week in Congress, are not starting from scratch in their relationship with the PSOE. In fact, the dialogue between the ERC leadership and the Government with the acting minister Félix Bolaños – one of the PSOE negotiators – has been common during the legislature. And Junts does not want to be "an addendum" in that relationship. "We do not know their previous agreements," they point out.
The leadership of Junts has made silence a wild card that allows them to keep all possibilities open. The final objective of the post-convergents is not an investiture by Sánchez and, therefore, they do not consider, as Marta Rovira did say, that rejecting it would have "dire consequences". Junts claims to have "free hands" to shape its demand for amnesty and self-determination and believes trust between the interlocutors is "key". The leaders of Junts reiterate over and over again the "importance and transcendence of the political moment", and for this reason they want to lead it from confidence and "ERC is not".
In any case, Junts' position on Thursday in Congress, with or without a parliamentary group, will not mean a preview of the investiture negotiation. This "is not about chairs", they reiterate. And they insist that the "gestures" of the PSOE, such as providing them with more resources and visibility in the chamber with their own group, will not condition them.
At the moment, Carles Puigdemont and Turull are in charge of stopping speculation about negotiations, offers and demands. These are days of "carrier pigeons", but there have been no substantive negotiations. The ranks of the party have assumed the strategy of the leadership, at first with some astonishment, and once silence was consolidated, with some respite. The discipline of his public offices has allowed him to avoid the continuous wear and tear of public debate.
However, yesterday Antoni Castellà broke his silence in an interview with Efe in which he challenged Sánchez to negotiate a Catalan-style Brexit if he intended to be invested. Castellà is a Junts deputy in the Parliament and was a candidate for the Senate on 23-J, but post-convergent sources indicate that his opinion corresponds to the leader of the Democrats and not Junts or the Council for the Republic, an entity chaired by Puigdemont and for which Castellà is the spokesperson.
