The most convergent, with the permission of Jordi Pujol and Artur Mas, yesterday blessed the ERC pact with the PSOE. "Congratulations on the agreement". The phrase of David Madí, a strategist towards whom many pro-independence people revere, with Oriol Junqueras as the addressee, ran through many republican chats. ERC is experiencing a moment of tense euphoria awaiting Carles Puigdemont's decision on the future of the legislature in Spain. "Amnesty, resolution of the conflict - not self-determination -, Rodalies" is the staging of the ERC agreement to invest Pedro Sánchez. No one in the Republican leadership expected to "get that much" considering the starting point of 23-J. The PSOE took these 7 votes in Congress for granted and Puigdemont has monopolized headlines and negotiating efforts in the PSOE for three months . Until a window of opportunity opened a week ago after an angry public complaint against the Ministry of Finance. ERC noise, Junts silence...
What is left for Puigdemont now? This is the question that reigns at the ERC headquarters. Together, he fueled his negotiations around the amnesty law and its international verifier, while the Republicans were awarded the "cheap" folders. Now the former president keeps the possibility of a pact in the fallow and has altered the calendar of Sánchez, who, today, hoped to have processed the amnesty law proposal and marked in red the date of the investiture debate. The excess of post-convergence zeal has turned the republican chavala into the Moscow gold of the Government of Pere Aragonès.
The document signed with the Socialists seeks the stability of the legislature "through a negotiation in good faith" and the "will" to approve the budgets; a good faith that ERC understands reciprocally with the support of Salvador Illa's PSC in the budgets of the Generalitat without the need to swallow the toads of a year ago. The dependence of the two governments becomes the most powerful control mechanism so that the well-intentioned transfer of Rodalies does not derail and the legislature does not become what the ERC called "Vietnam".
The PSOE has distributed gestures on both sides. Photos and calls from Sánchez for the bicephalic ERC, 14-hour meetings, telematic connections of more than 7 with small panels in the bedroom; photos of political rehabilitation for Puigdemont and more silence... It is the competition between pro-independence supporters that upsets the choreography. The firm of Junqueras has taken, by chapters, the holder of the amnesty law - including the causes of the Tsunami that the Civil Guard is now handling, and the CDRs on the way to judgment -, the creation of the mixed company Rodalies Catalunya and the remission of 15,000 million debt of the Generalitat. And even the figure of the verifier of recognized prestige, with international names on the table.
"All the roads have been cut" through which Junts could travel from the intelligent confrontation to the pact with the PSOE, they say to ERC. Meanwhile, Jordi Turull disqualifies the Republicans' pact in his message to the Junts executive, which is unaware of the details of the negotiation. It is despised from the scope of the amnesty to the transfer of Rodalies. It is Junts that treasures the know-how of railway management in Catalonia.
Electoral calculators are blowing smoke. Internal polls show that the PSC remains prominent and the pro-independence majority in Parliament is now as unattainable as the trust between its protagonists. Only one amnesty law will emerge from the triangular negotiation, but negotiation tables are proliferating: one between governments, two between parties, with their respective verifiers, in addition to different monitoring commissions. ERC intends that its delegations to the Government-Generalitat table and that of parties have some coincidence in their composition, but the sustainability of all these parallel mechanisms is doubtful when the political conflict is one. The truce between Junts and ERC has failed, but without the pacification of their relations, progressing in their goals - not electoral - is a mirage.
