"The process is over" and what comes next depends on the eyes with which you look at it. Pedro Sánchez's alliance with ERC has been politically beneficial for all parties, although it is the President of the Government who is preparing to exploit it in the short term and standing up to the ultra-right. Two simple messages serve Sánchez to arrogate the title of peacemaker of Catalonia: "the process has ended and "there will be no self-determination consultation." The diagnosis in Moncloa is unappealable even for the pro-independence voter: there is no unity of parties and entities favorable to independence; The unilateral route has been parked in practice – not even in Junts do they propose it–; and in Catalonia the Constitution is fulfilled.
The procés can be considered finished, but not the Catalan conflict. The "reunion" strategy has paid off for Sánchez and the PSC, and if the Catalan folder continues to be an electoral weapon for the PP with its sights set on the general elections, the Socialists may be tempted to push Pere Aragonès to resolve it definitively by way of the polls in Catalonia before the Spanish left-right battle at the end of 2023. A comfortable socialist victory in the Catalan elections – with the pro-independence majority at stake, according to the polls – would not only serve to file the eternal folder and deactivate the independence movement, but also to wrap Sánchez in the mantle of victory for the definitive assault. It is one of the many options on the table.
With the ERC vote for the State budget, Sánchez achieved the necessary time for the Feijóo effect to come up against reality and, with the reform of the Penal Code, the alibi to shake the hornet's nest of a General Council of the Judiciary and a Court Constitutional in absentia before a forced renovation that arrives four years late due to the incapacity of the PSOE and the PP. The debate on the reform of embezzlement, even among the socialist ranks, has been seen more than relegated to the emergence of the judicial crisis that was proclaimed loudly from Catalonia.
In the middle of an institutional storm, ERC does not renounce the commitment acquired by Sánchez and Aragonès to meet before the end of the year at the dialogue table. Its call was conditioned to the achievement of agreements, and few will be more relevant than the elimination of the crime of sedition and the reduction of embezzlement for cases in which there is no profit motive. "The commitments are what they are", they maintain in Palau, although entangled in the negotiation of the budgets and, pending the decision of the Constitutional Court on the reform of the Judiciary, a placid moment is not in sight.
ERC and its leaders have benefited from the entente with the Socialists, and now they are rushing to refocus their objectives on the pro-independence terrain. "This does not end here," says Aragonès. On the same day and at the same time that the PSOE-ERC agreement on embezzlement was signed, the Republican leadership sent its militants the political paper that the party will debate in January and in which an agreed referendum with conditions on the participation and with a minimum of 55% yes to start a negotiated process of independence.
The Republicans thus go from the inevitable referendum to the opportune referendum and place the president at the forefront of an operation that will mature at the beginning of the year. The idea of a Canadian "clarity agreement" was rejected by Parliament in September, but ERC clings to it to try to continue its strategic commitment to dialogue, even appealing for a reform of the Constitution.
The PSOE and ERC leadership linked the future of the dialogue table to the electoral cycle, and the struggle has already begun. Clash over the referendum with Moncloa and over budgets with the PSC. Aragonès needs the votes, but Salvador Illa wants political recognition for his contribution. The ERC agreement with the commons had a round trip: the Generalitat's accounts pact is announced on Tuesday, and that of the Barcelona City Council, on Friday. Illa is not only thinking about the prospects of the PSC, but also about those of Sánchez. Socialists and Republicans are rivals in all electoral stages: in Barcelona, the metropolitan area, the Catalan ones before or after, and the general ones in Catalonia. And ERC will face its other referendum again: Sánchez yes or no, and in exchange for what.
