There hasn't even been a call yet, and Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo are already heating up and straining for an eventual meeting between the two, which makes the possibility of reaching agreements far away.
If Sánchez talks about a "work commission", Feijóo sees a maneuver to "clean the negotiating table with the pro-independence parties". If the president reiterates the accusation that the most important case of lawfare is the blockade that the Popular Party maintains on the General Council of the Judicial Power (CGPJ), the popular leadership warns that, if the law is not changed, Sánchez "can save the call”.
After warning on the eve of his intention to call Feijóo to a first meeting in this new mandate, before the end of the year, the president reaffirmed his strategy yesterday when he announced, in an interview with Antena 3, that in this appointment he will propose to the leader of the Popular Party to open a work commission to try to agree on three major State pacts.
The three "priority" issues that Sánchez wants to clear up with Feijóo at the beginning of this legislature are the approval of a new regional financing system, which has been out of date for nine years; the renewal of the CGPJ, which in turn accumulates more than five years with the expired mandate; and the one-time reform of article 49 of the Constitution, to eliminate the term "diminished", with reference to people with a disability.
"It is important that the two major political parties work with a horizon of agreement", assured the head of the Executive. "And in this work committee I hope we can reach some sort of agreement", confided Sánchez.
But the mistrust and confrontation fueled for so many months is now taking its toll. The PP does not trust it. He believes that there are hidden intentions in calling this meeting. People believe that if Sánchez really wanted to make deals, he would call directly instead of talking to Feijóo through the media. For this reason, they fear that the president of the central government will use the meeting with the leader of the opposition to divert attention from his negotiations with Junts.
The PP therefore sees the work commission proposed by Sánchez as "an attempt to whitewash its negotiating table with the pro-independence parties". Feijóo believes that the way of negotiating until now, in the institutions, remains valid and yesterday the general secretary of the party, Cuca Gamarra, answered Sánchez with a forceful: "No tables, no mediators and meetings in Spanish territory".
Feijóo conditions the meeting for the president to explain himself about the amnesty law and to inform him of the "concessions to pro-independence". PP sources point out that "the Spanish have the right to know what is being negotiated" and "the reasons why it is necessary to subject it to an international verifier".
Regarding the renewal of the CGPJ, the PP assures that it will not yield a millimeter and if there is no change in the way members are elected, there will be no renewal. With regard to the reform of article 49 of the Constitution, he warns of the possibility that Sánchez's partners will end up calling a referendum that will give rise to a debate on the monarchy or the right to decide. Whereas with respect to the financing system, the PP believes that this matter must be debated in the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council (CPFF), a body that guarantees multilateralism.
Sánchez, however, yesterday once again defended and justified the future amnesty law for those accused of the process, negotiated with Junts and ERC, just as in the last legislature he approved pardons for imprisoned pro-independence leaders. "There is virtue in this decision, because once and for all we must leave behind the judicial drift caused by the trauma that represented October 1, 2017, and everything that happened before," he assured.
The president of the central government, until now, had already warned that the PP will also benefit from this amnesty law, since it facilitates coexistence in Catalonia and recovers as a political actor a party like Junts, which until now was "out of the system". But Sánchez yesterday went a step further and assured that Feijóo would also have promoted this amnesty if he had not depended on the ultra-right Vox to be able to govern. "I am so convinced of the virtues of the amnesty law that I am convinced that the PP, if it had not depended on the votes of Vox to be able to go ahead with its investiture, and only on peripheral nationalism, would have approved the amnesty law ", he affirmed.
But, faced with the caution and reluctance expressed by the PP about the work commission offered by Sánchez, in Moncloa they are trying to pressure Feijóo to accept the invitation. And they throw a question in the air: "Why is the PP afraid to negotiate?".
