The president of the PNV Executive, Andoni Ortuzar, traveled last Wednesday to Brussels, to the European Parliament, to meet with Carles Puigdemont and accelerate the investiture of Pedro Sánchez. The meeting had a similar format to the one held on September 15 and, in fact, the same four people participated: both were accompanied by Joseba Aurrekoetxea, member of the PNV Executive, and Jordi Turull, general secretary of the independentistas. In this case, however, the content went further and went fully into detail about some of the central issues that both parties are negotiating ahead of the investiture, especially regarding the national recognition of Catalonia and Euskadi.
If last September Ortuzar's trip to Waterloo sought to end the distance that PNV and Junts had maintained for six years, as well as to exchange points of view regarding the negotiation of the investiture, this second meeting is framed in the right direction. end of the negotiation with the socialists.
The two formations see an eventual investiture close and sought to coordinate around matters that are on the negotiating agenda of both parties, although seeking particular agreements that adapt to the aspirations of each formation. This is the case of the national recognition of Catalonia and Euskadi or the reform of the State model, issues that both parties have put on the table.
The meeting, confirmed to La Vanguardia by both parties, took place in the European Parliament, in the same room where Puigdemont received PSOE leaders this Monday.
The meeting is due to the desire of the two groups to maintain a high degree of coordination, something they agreed to when Ortuzar visited Waterloo on September 15.
That meeting definitively broke with six years of distance between PNV and Junts, since the process revealed the differences at a strategic level between both formations.
The PNV, in any case, had always maintained a line of communication with Junts leaders linked to CiU in the past.
Jordi Turull, Josep Rull and Francesc Homs had a political and friendly relationship for decades with Aitor Esteban, Joseba Aurrekoetxea and Andoni Ortuzar, a bond that was maintained even in moments of greatest tension and that has favored the thawing of relations between the two formations.
In any case, the key to the current coordination between the PNV and Junts has to do with the current political moment. Basque nationalists consider that the investiture negotiation opens an opportunity to rethink the State model in a plurinational key and want to align agendas with Junts, at least on some points. This does not mean that both formations seek to resolve issues such as national recognition in the same sense. Each formation maintains its own strategy; However, PNV and Junst consider that they can row in the same direction as the socialists move forward.
The question of national recognition is one of the thorniest issues in the negotiation between PNV and Junts, on the one hand, and the socialists, on the other. The Jeltzales resolved this issue four years ago through point four of the investiture agreement with the PSOE, which required many hours of negotiation and somewhat intricate wording.
“Promote, through dialogue between parties and institutions, the necessary reforms to adapt the structure of the State to the recognition of territorial identities, agreeing, where appropriate, on the necessary legal modifications, in order to find a solution to both the Catalan dispute as in the negotiation and agreement of the new Statute of the CAV, taking into account national feelings of belonging," they agreed at that point.
That section of the investiture agreement, however, would become a dead letter and the Jeltzales find themselves again at the same point in the negotiation; Yes, this time with his old friends from convergent space at his side.
