Pedro Sánchez already warned: “It has no route.” The President of the Government did not see any future for the latest popular legislative initiative (ILP) in favor of the independence of Catalonia registered in the Parliament, after on February 20 the Board of the Catalan Chamber approved its admission for processing. “This is the second or third time,” Sánchez warned of this new sovereignty proposal, in an informal conversation with journalists.
At that time, in any case, the PSOE was in full negotiations with Junts per Catalunya and with Esquerra Republicana to unblock the Amnesty law proposal, finally approved in the Congress of Deputies on March 14. And no one yet envisaged at that time a rush of the Catalan elections to next May 12, as the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, decided the day before, on March 13.
Already in the middle of the Catalan electoral campaign of 12-M, therefore, Pedro Sánchez now chooses to make a move and reaffirm his position against the independence of Catalonia. In full harmony with the position of the PSC candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat, former minister Salvador Illa.
The Council of Ministers thus plans to approve at its meeting today, as confirmed by Moncloa sources, an appeal filed by Sánchez himself before the Constitutional Court (TC) against the decision of the Parliamentary Committee to admit this proposal for processing, which advocates declaring the independence of Catalonia.
The approval of this challenge before the TC also has the endorsement of a favorable report from the Council of State, now chaired by the former vice president of the Government Carmen Calvo. The Executive's appeal could mean that the agreement of the Catalan Chamber Board is immediately suspended.
The sovereigntist ILP was registered in the Parliament by Solidaritat Catalana per la Independència (SI) and prospered thanks to the favorable votes in the Board of Junts and the CUP, the abstention of Esquerra and the contrary vote of the PSC, which last Thursday already presented an appeal of unconstitutionality against the processing of this proposal, as the central Executive will now do.
The initiative also had an unfavorable report from the Parliament's lawyers, despite the fact that it was not binding, which warned that it could exceed its powers. This is also what the PSC understood and this is now confirmed by the Government, also determined to challenge the decision of the Board before the TC.
“We were clear: we did not like, politically or in any case, that proposal,” the spokesperson for the PSOE executive, Esther Peña, admitted yesterday in an interview on TVE, regarding the independence initiative admitted for processing. “In addition, the Parliament's own lawyers have confirmed different reports to the contrary,” she highlighted.
Neither independence nor a self-determination referendum in Catalonia. Ferraz's spokesperson also denied that the socialists are negotiating an illegal consultation, in their conversations with Junts and ERC, now in any case paralyzed until after the 12-M elections. “The PSOE will never find us in formulas that divide,” Peña refuted. And she assured that the position of the socialists is “clear and clear.” “We do not opt, neither now nor in the future, for options that divide society, in any case,” she stressed. And she framed these “maximalist” positions that she attributed to ERC and Junts in the electoral context of 12-M.
But these explanations from the PSOE spokesperson did not in any case convince the leadership of the Popular Party, which did seem to lend credibility to Marta Rovira's statement that there are already ongoing negotiations on the referendum. The PP accused Pedro Sánchez of reactivating the process. “We are witnessing the return to point zero, the beginning of the independence process,” warned his spokesperson, Borja Sémper.
“The rule of law and Catalan society deactivated the process, and Sánchez activates it again. This is the sad reality we face today: the health of the Government depends on what fugitives from justice like Carles Puigdemont or Marta Rovira say,” denounced Sémper, after the meeting of the PP steering committee.
