Just one year ago today, the Council of Ministers approved, after long deliberation, the pardons that released the pro-independence leaders convicted by the procés. "Now is the time for politics," Pedro Sánchez proclaimed on June 22, 2021, after announcing his "reunion" project with Catalonia the day before, at a conference at the Liceu.
The anniversary of this date, therefore loaded with symbolism, is the moment chosen to formally reopen the dialogue between the Government and the Generalitat after long months of clashes and disagreements as a result of the espionage scandal involving pro-independence politicians. "The pardons were a first step, but completely insufficient," warned Pere Aragonès, however, yesterday.
And, finally, today's meeting will not have the presidents of both executives as protagonists, as was initially contemplated, in an appointment to which they were summoned the last time they saw each other, on May 6 in Barcelona. It will therefore be the institutional interlocutors of the Government and the Generalitat, Minister Félix Bolaños and Minister Laura Vilagrà, who will meet this afternoon in Moncloa, as they did on April 24 when the Pegasus case broke out.
"The fact that this meeting is taking place is already good news," the government spokeswoman, Isabel Rodríguez, celebrated yesterday. And she once again vindicated Sánchez's commitment to "institutional normality and dialogue" with the Generalitat, which served to deflate the social and political conflict in Catalonia. "Today's situation is nothing like that of 2017 or 2019," she reiterated.
In Moncloa they insist that in recent months "the dialogue with the Generalitat has never been broken", but they assume the tensions that accumulated after the Pegasus case, to the point that Esquerra, an essential partner to make up the majority of the Sánchez's investiture, chose to block the entire legislative agenda of the Government. Among other reported breaches, the reduced execution of the 2021 State budget, in infrastructure investments in Catalonia, was the straw that broke the patience of the Generalitat. For this reason, in Moncloa they consider the meeting that Bolaños and Vilagrà will hold today to be "a good symptom", which they assure will serve to "flatten out" a meeting between Sánchez and Aragonès that could take place before the summer holidays. "Everything is going in the right direction," they trust Sánchez's team. And they hope that this Wednesday's appointment will end with "agreements" between both parties, although they avoided specifying a possible agenda or the specific issues that will be put on the table during the meeting between the Minister of the Presidency and the Minister of Presidency.
The Government attends the meeting with the aim of addressing the deadlock situation between the two executives, especially as a result of the Pegasus case and an accumulation of events in recent weeks that greatly undermined and deteriorated Aragonès' confidence in Sánchez, and “the folder of repression”. In addition, the Generalitat wants guarantees that cases of espionage such as the one uncovered by Citizen Lab will not be repeated, or the lack of budgetary investment in Catalonia in 2021 admitted by the Ministry of Finance itself. In any case, the Government stresses that it will not be "a return to normality".
The Government spokeswoman, Isabel Rodríguez, yesterday showed her "satisfaction" for the appointment scheduled for today in Moncloa. But the Government spokeswoman, Patrícia Plaja, reiterated that "immobility is not an option." And he affirmed that the Catalan Executive professes little confidence in Sánchez after the espionage scandal: “The word that is farthest from satisfaction is what the Government has right now regarding what the explanations and responses that the Spanish Government has given have been. about the Catalangate”.
Vilagrà will ask Bolaños today, among other questions, if the central Executive intends to attend to the new Council of Europe report which, according to Aragonès, "questions Spanish democratic standards and quality", and demands "an end to exile and the judicialization of politics. The president of the Generalitat assured that he also shared the demand for a modification of the crimes of rebellion and sedition in the Penal Code, and the concern about the change of criteria of the Supreme Court to review the pardons for the independence supporters of the procés.
Sánchez is also aware that the tense situation with ERC leaves the parliamentary processing of key projects of the government coalition, such as the gag law, the Housing law or the Democratic Memory law, up in the air. At the same time, he puts up the possible support of the Republicans for the draft State budget for 2023, which the Government is already preparing.
Another issue that hinders the relationship between the two governments, and in particular between the PSOE and the ERC, is the lack of progress in the dialogue table to resolve the conflict in Catalonia which, after meeting in mid-September with the commitment to do so again At the beginning of the year, they did not allow new meetings of this forum, which many pro-independence sectors already consider dead and buried.
The fiasco of the joint candidacy between Catalonia and Aragon to organize the 2030 Winter Olympics is another factor that poisons the relationship between the two parties.
