The waters that during these last days separated Junts per Catalunya and PSOE in the negotiation for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, regarding the amnesty law, returned this weekend to their course. Proof of this is that the leaders of JxCat returned to Brussels yesterday to try to close the agreement together with former president Carles Puigdemont, who has been the orchestra conductor and at many times also the performer in the talks with the socialists.
The general secretary of the post-convergent formation, Jordi Turull, and the president of his group in Parliament, Albert Batet, flew to the Belgian capital yesterday for the possibility of the agreement materializing today. The president of the party, Laura Borràs, who attended the funeral of doctor Carles Furriols, plans to do so today, according to sources consulted.
Negotiations between the two parties had advanced considerably in a low-key plan at the end of October, and a week ago it was considered that the pact was on track, although not closed, and that there would be little going back, which is why he staged the negotiation with a photo of Puigdemont with Santos Cerdán, number three of the Socialists – secretary of organization in Ferraz – and Sánchez's most trusted person. The meeting, attended by other leaders, took place in the Eurochamber and represented the first public image of the contacts between the two parties.
Nevertheless, when it seemed that the pact had already been made on Thursday and the summit of the post-convergents had been convened in a hotel in Brussels - an appearance had even been prepared to announce it - the wording of the law of amnesty once again opened a rift between JxCat and the PSOE - the discrepancies started on Wednesday night - which has been renewed in the last few hours. Santos Cerdán was in Brussels on Thursday and Friday to try to tie up the support of the post-convergents, but when he saw that the agreement was not imminent he decided to return to Madrid at the last minute on Friday.
The truth is that Junts negotiators – Puigdemont, Turull and the leader of the party in Madrid, Mírian Nogueras – met on Friday at the headquarters of the European Parliament in Brussels with those of the PSOE, but apparently there was no face-to-face meeting and yes, on the other hand, exchange of documents and negotiation by telematic means - with lawyers involved -, at the same time the general secretary of JxCat asked for "calm" from his people for the hours and days of "pressure" on his party that he was predicting.
The discrepancies had to do with causes related to the process but not directly related to the consultation of 9-N 2014 or the referendum of 1 October 2017, which Junts understands as lawfare, the use of judicial procedures with purposes of political persecution, discrediting or destroying the public image and disqualifying a political opponent.
This would be the case, according to Junts, of the recent conviction of former Interior Minister Miquel Buch, by the Mossos d'Esquadra agent who had accompanied Puigdemont as an escort; of the Voloh case, a tailor's drawer with several pieces that is being heard at court number 1 in Barcelona, or of the pending trial of the head of the former president's office, the historian Josep Lluís Alay, to go in the New Caledonia referendum in 2020, a case that has a trial date.
In fact, Puigdemont, who has avoided the media spotlight during these months of negotiations beyond his September 5 conference and the few times he has spoken, has done so through messages on the X social network, formerly Twitter , yesterday made a reference to lawfare cases. "The strategic use of laws to harm dissidents or political rivals does not aim to do justice but to achieve, through unacceptable means in a democracy, political effects through the judiciary", pointed out the leader of JxCat, who made a veiled reference to what separated Junts from the PSOE.
