In Italy they have a very beautiful word to refer to the turn, the change of direction. It is said: svolta. Sounds good.
The turnaround carried out yesterday in Brussels by Santos Cerdán and Carles Puigdemont is a svolta that causes vertigo in many people in Spain. (Allow me a note: Cerdán, rocky organizational secretary of the PSOE, is one of the few politicians who these days have accepted questions from journalists).
Vertigo. It is logical that it be so. The PSOE assumes for the first time, explicitly, the basic narrative of the Catalan nation, and the apparently hardest faction of the independence movement agrees to return within the framework governed by the 1978 Constitution, to continue defending its postulates. Just yesterday, Junts and ERC rejected in the Parliament of Catalonia a motion from the CUP in favor of a new unilateral referendum.
The hinge that allows the turn is the amnesty. The most tangible point of the agreement is that clean slate that a majority of Spanish society currently does not accept or does not see completely clearly. High-ranking state officials are up in arms. The confrontation with the judiciary is tremendous.
The amnesty means the following: the independentists who six years ago proclaimed a secession without practical effects now submit to the sovereignty of the Spanish people deposited in Parliament to obtain the most generous of grace measures.
The Brussels svolta also means the following: everyone in. All parties and currents of a certain entity are today within the institutional framework willing to participate in the political game through coalitions, pacts, alliances or partial agreements. Everyone, from Vox to EH Bildu. This “everyone in” has only occurred in a few moments in the contemporary history of Spain.
That “all in” means that at some point in the coming years, the Popular Party and Junts will come into contact, without any drama to prevent it, since that drama will have been erased by the amnesty. That is also part of the Brussels svolta.
Shortly after the last general elections, journalist José Antich, who knows the ins and outs of Spanish and Catalan politics well, declared the following to the digital newspaper El Español: “If Aznar led the Popular Party, he would talk to Junts about being president.” He was surely right. Esteban González Pons tried at the beginning of September on behalf of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and Aznar immediately cut off that movement, since he is no longer the formal leader of the party – but the main strategic inspirer – and understands that the dynamic that is now opening It could be the grave of the PSOE. Aznar has never forgotten March 2004 and believes that the amnesty will be the Iraq war of his adversaries. Felipe González fears it. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is convinced that not. And Pedro Sánchez trusts in his luck, which one day may break.
The Popular Party's dialogue with Junts will come. That will happen later. Now come days of difficult digestion. “National uprising!” protesters shouted last night on Ferraz Street in Madrid. Again there were scenes of violence.
The Ibex 35 closed yesterday with profits. German Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrives in Madrid today to meet with Sánchez.
