In the Delegation of the Government of the Generalitat in Madrid they do not remember the last time that a minister attended the celebration of the Day of Catalonia in the capital. Yesterday, a decade after a handful of Falangists blew up the same event at the Blanquerna bookstore, the Council of Ministers was represented at the highest level: Vice President Yolanda Díaz. Socialist senator Eva Granados also attended.
The leader of Sumar, who was photographed a week ago with former president Carles Puigdemont in Brussels, already has the snapshot with ERC. It was after toasting with cava with a newly minted Government delegate, Joan Capdevila, “to the brilliant dawns” that she – she hopes – are to come.
Representatives from the Catalan political, business and trade union world gathered in the gardens of the Delegation. After the compromise questions about how the holidays went, the groups of people came together with the same common denominator: taking the pulse of the negotiations to reissue the progressive coalition. In the courtyard, no one dared to utter – because they could invoke it – the ghost of the electoral repetition.
The Minister of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrà, who had breakfast in Brussels, had lunch at the Congress of Deputies, and drank her cava at Alcalá 44, explained that ERC has put three folders on the table that must be opened if Pedro Sánchez wants to tell with Republican votes. “They should not be taken for granted,” she warned. The first of them, which is called amnesty, carries the notice that the law can – and should – be processed before the inauguration of the socialist candidate. The second: self-determination. As Vilagrà acknowledged yesterday, this “was not open until now.” “It is complex, but we want to open this aspect.” The third – that of Social Welfare – includes the demand for more economic resources.
