The PSOE and Junts negotiators are seeing each other for the first time today in the negotiation space that they agreed upon in the investiture agreement. The actors of the talks between both political forces are the same who worked in the last months on the pact that allowed the re-election of Pedro Sánchez and yesterday already traveled to Geneva, where they will have the support and accompaniment of the foundation Henry Dunant. The organization, which has Javier Solana as honorary president, mediated the negotiations for the end of ETA.
In this forum there will be the secretary of organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán - who suspended the event he planned to hold last night in Alicante -, and his deputy in Ferraz, Juan Francisco Serrano. On behalf of JxCat, the presence of former president Carles Puigdemont is expected; the general secretary, Jordi Turull, and the spokeswoman in Congress, Míriam Nogueras.
This is the nucleus of leaders who sealed the pact for the investiture, in which the help of the international verification mechanism was already counted on, as Turull revealed a few days ago.
Both Junts and the PSOE are committed to silence before and after the meeting. "We will be discreet, and we already know that Junts is also able to maintain discretion", stress the socialists.
The two parties agree that for the talks to be fruitful there must be absolute discretion, as there was in the first stages of the investiture negotiations.
JxCat will propose as a starting point the holding of a referendum through article 92 of the Constitution, as Turull himself (on behalf of CiU), Marta Rovira (ERC) and Joan Herrera (ICV-EUiA) did in 2014 ) in Congress. In addition, they plan to claim another of the measures that the Generalitat - with Artur Mas at the head - put on the table at the beginning of the process: a financing system that recognizes the uniqueness of Catalonia. His idea is to request that Catalonia be excluded from the Organic Law on Financing of the Autonomous Communities (Lofca) and that the Catalan Administration, the Catalan Tax Agency, collect 100% of the taxes.
Sources familiar with Junts' internal dynamics point out that the party's intention is to obtain tangible issues in the negotiation before the European elections next spring. For this reason, they have previous internal work, and the advice even of people outside the organization but experts in certain subjects, such as the economy.
Puigdemont reiterated this week that JxCat will support Sánchez's coalition government as long as there is "negotiation progress". In this situation, he warned that they do not rule out agreeing with the PP in the votes if necessary.
The PSOE and Junts agreed that there would be monthly meetings, and although the forum had to be launched before the end of November, for agenda reasons it starts at the beginning of December.
The meeting precedes the one Sánchez will hold with President Pere Aragonès on December 21. The PSOE, as in the investiture negotiations, must strike a balance between two competing forces in the Catalan arena, JxCat and ERC. In this competition are now also the revenues they can get from trading after the turn of the post-convergents after 23-J.
