Under the cloak of the holidays, which covers everything, the pieces of the political board are moving. The official story is that there will be nothing until after the constitution of the Cortes Generales on August 17, but the limits of the playing field have been explored and delimited in recent days.
The pro-independence forces, which are one of the key pieces for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez and for the configuration of the Congress of Deputies - especially Junts -, however, are shielding themselves and waiting for a formal proposal to reach them before getting wet- yes This is why, day after day, they urge the socialist candidate, who is spending these days in Morocco with his family, to be the one to take the initiative.
But emissaries of the PSOE have these days carefully surveyed actors and the JxCat environment with proposals that encompass the economic and judicial spheres, according to consulted sources. But there is nothing official on the table and the instruction decreed in the post-convergent formation, after a call for calm, is that there be "discretion" and silence around the negotiation. The management asked for it and Carles Puigdemont claimed it, who is now the one carrying the baton in this game despite the fact that he does not have organic positions.
"We have no official proposal, no content, no interlocutors", point out sources of the training. "There are many messages that reach many people, but this and nothing are the same", add these sources, who remember that they have imposed "silence and maximum discretion" when entering the matter.
In a similar vein, Pere Aragonès spoke on Tuesday when taking stock of the political year that is ending. "Many ideas and proposals will come out. Some will talk about financing, others about the FLA - Autonomic Liquidity Fund - and infrastructures", said the president when he was asked about a possible cancellation of the Generalitat's debt with the FLA or about the possibility that there Catalan management at El Prat airport. "Until a negotiation is on track, and the one who must move first is Pedro Sánchez, I will not be able to comment on specific aspects that today are more part of speculation than reality", he added.
Junts is the hardest bone to crack in the equation of the investiture, no matter how much Esquerra insists that they have the same deputies as their former partner - seven - and that yesterday Marta Rovira warned that "no one can take for granted" the ERC votes for Sánchez's investiture. For this reason, the PSOE has transferred some proposals to the post-convergents to try to convince them.
In the judicial portfolio, the measures are an express law to be able to renew the General Council of the Judiciary – expired five years ago – without the need for the Popular Party and to include in the governing body of judges people proposed by JxCat, of on the one hand, and, on the other, to seek the effects of the amnesty with reforms in the Penal Code that have as their object to leave on wet paper the causes relating to the process, also those that are addressed before the Court of Auditors.
Also, it is offered to shield the Catalan language in education, after some court rulings require 25% of teaching hours to be in Spanish.
On the economic front, the possibility of Catalonia having its own tax agency with more capacity than the current one and an update of the autonomous financing model – which expired nine years ago – is on the table, which means a substantial improvement in the resources it receives, about 3,000 million euros more per year than at present. In any case, not much more has been specified to avoid revolting the territorial barons of the PP.
To all this, if the general budgets of the State for the next financial year are approved, we could add compliance with the third additional provision of the Statute, according to which investment must be made in Catalonia in accordance with the GDP it represents in Spain as a whole.
This package of measures would be well received by some leaders of the more pragmatic training sector, which wants to use the position of strength that Juntes now has in the Congress of Deputies.
In any case, Puigdemont is in the control room and made it clear at the weekend that he wanted to limit the negotiation to political conflict; the other things, he assessed, are putting "patches on the legislature". Yesterday, after a new sentence requiring 25% of classes to be taught in Spanish in a school, he asserted that Catalan is "going backwards pushed by the official offensive of the State". "They are deconstructing social and political consensus for mere linguistic supremacism, and they still ask to continue handing them blank checks because 'the right must be stopped'", he opined. "You cannot repeat this scheme if you want different results", concluded the former president.
At ERC, the bet is to maintain the dialogue table to be able to move forward along the path already taken in the last legislature. But they know that achieving a referendum is a long way off and they want more tangible issues such as reducing the fiscal deficit or a transfer of resources and infrastructure from Rodalies. Regarding funding, the idea of the Catalan Government is to negotiate bilaterally with the Central Executive and try to obtain more resources.
