The agreement between Junts and the PSOE could have arrived yesterday... and it could do so today. “It can arrive at any time,” say sources familiar with the negotiation, which continues between both parties in the midst of the offensive and judicial pressure, which yesterday was more pronounced than in the previous days. There was a declaration from the General Council of the Judiciary against an amnesty law, the text of which is unknown to the members, which was approved thanks to nine votes from the conservative sector. In addition, the National Court issued an order charging twelve people with the Tsunami Democràtic protests in the fall of 2019, including Carles Puigdemont and Marta Rovira. A circumstance that is not new, since in previous days, other causes related to the process had already accelerated and protests had been called, such as the one that will take place in Barcelona this Friday with members of the State Security Forces and Bodies such as protagonists.
The leadership of Carles Puigdemont's party traveled to Belgium again between Sunday and early yesterday due to the possibility of smoke bianca and the number three of the Socialists, Santos Cerdán, was also there. However, there was no agreement and a small group of leaders remained there, with the general secretary, Jordi Turull, the leader of the party in Madrid, Míriam Nogueras, and the president of the party, Laura Borràs, as happened last week. Other Junts leaders who traveled to Brussels must be present today in Barcelona, in the plenary session of the Parliament. These are the president of the Catalan Chamber, Anna Erra, and the deputies Batet, Josep Rius, David Saldoni and Aurora Madaula.
“Technical issues” in the legal field, in the drafting of the amnesty law, that would affect the cases that the post-convergents consider lawfare – use of the courts for political purposes and persecution for political reasons – continue to mark the distances between both formations in the negotiation for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez.
At JxCat they want to ensure that cases that they associate with the process but are not directly related to the 9-N consultation and the 1-O referendum are also amnestied. Such would be the case of the former minister Miquel Buch, convicted a few weeks ago by Puigdemont's bodyguard, or the head of the former president's office, the historian Josep Lluís Alay, pending trial for attending a referendum that took place in New Caledonia in the fall. 2020 and pay for the trip with public resources. Or some of the pieces of the Voloh, a case that is being investigated in court number 1 of Barcelona with various people investigated and crimes of different kinds.
In that section there are those who have also tried to include the president of Junts, Laura Borràs, convicted in the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia for irregularities during her time as director of the Institution of Catalan Letters, or Puigdemont's lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, who is pending trial in the National Court.
The criminal is accused of money laundering and document falsification along with the drug trafficker Sito Miñanco, whom he had defended until 2019. However, the socialists understand that these two causes, although at certain times their protagonists have pointed out that they are an example of lawfare, have nothing to do with the process and in JxCat they have not been defended like the other cases mentioned above.
The day began yesterday with the Junts and PSOE teams taking positions in Brussels, separated by just 300 meters of physical distance that, in the end, turned out to be incomprehensible in political terms. Cerdán was installed in the Sofitel hotel in the European neighborhood, where he is staying, and the post-convergents, in the Brussels Press Club, a privately managed press center that has a special place in the intra-European history of the process. It was there that Puigdemont and several councilors gave their first big press conference when they left Spain six years ago.
There were no personal meetings between the leaders of both teams but documents were exchanged. While socialist sources insisted mid-morning that although there are only a few “technical” issues left to resolve in Junts, they were keeping their cards. "It could be today, it could be tomorrow, we don't know...", commented sources from the training in the press center on rue Froissart in Brussels, while they ordered the La Vanguardia correspondent to leave the place where Jordi Turull was. , general secretary of JxCat, and Albert Batet, president of his group in the Parliament, among others, but not former president Puigdemont. Half an hour later, the leaders left en masse to disperse in different directions without giving any explanation.
Moments later, the news of the indictment of Puigdemont and Marta Rovira in the Democratic Tsunami case became known and both parties cooled the prospect of signing an agreement in the following hours, as was clear with the tweet launched by Puigdemont, which summarized the news that They came from the National Court like a “Go for them!” and the reflection of a “permanent coup d'état.” In the middle of the afternoon, the post-convergents warned that there would be no agreement or appearance, although they continued to “talk” and “negotiate” with the socialists.
The ex-councillors Buch and Meritxell Budó, who had affairs in Brussels of the Catalan Association of Municipalities, also approached the place where the members of JxCat were.
