The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has admitted on TVE that “it is true” that he proposed to the EU the payment for the use of highways, just one day after presenting it as a “hoax”. In statements this Friday to the public channel, the socialist candidate stated: “It is true that this possibility is included in the Recovery Plan.”

The day before, he omitted that reality in statements to the Sixth and presented the plan as “a hoax by Mr. Feijóo and Mr. Abascal”. However, Sánchez describes this section of the Plan as a “possibility”, despite the fact that the European Council decision of June 2021 states “the creation of a payment mechanism for the use of State highways, which will begin to operate from 2024, in accordance with the principle of whoever pollutes pays” as a true commitment of the Spanish Government and not a survey. This was recalled this Thursday by the economic spokesperson of the European Commission.

As Sánchez has specified on TVE, what is happening now is “a change of position” on his part, because “it is also true that in the negotiation that we are making of the Addendum, that possibility is already withdrawn”.. The Addendum in the request for an extra 94,000 million European funds in which the Government takes the opportunity to try to modify previous commitments.

“Reality is dynamic and we have changed that position with the European Commission. It is what is being negotiated,” the PSOE leader declared, without making it clear whether it will be possible to back down and with what other formula he will finance the huge investment necessary to modernize and maintain the Spanish road network. Sánchez has justified the change of position, because “things have happened between 2021 and 2023, we have overcome the pandemic and we are suffering a war”.

He has assumed that if he continues to govern, the Sustainable Mobility Bill will not incorporate payment for the use of roads, although the European Commission has not yet given an answer and each commitment is linked to obtaining European funds. In this specific case, the fifth payment conditional on the commitments acquired by December 2023 as payment for use.

The European Commission corrects the Government on tolls in 2024

On the other hand, when the elections of July 23 have not yet been held, thoughts are already directed to the day after, to what would happen or with whom an agreement will be made.. The scenario that is drawn for the PSOE, according to the known surveys, is that if there is a possibility that Pedro Sánchez could be invested, he must once again have the support of the nationalist forces. ERC and Bildu have already warned that “they will raise the price” if the socialist governs again. Sánchez, a few hours after voting, tries to distance himself from the independentistas so as not to scare away that moderate and undecided vote that he is trying to capture in this final stretch.

In the PSOE they have been trying to attract, according to the data from the last known CIS, almost a million undecided voters, among those who voted for PSOE and PP in 2019.. A very important basket that could be key to tipping the balance of governance. Sánchez tries to distance himself from groups such as ERC or Bildu, although he admits that he will agree to laws with them again if it is for socioeconomic measures such as those that have been put in place this legislature.

The PP affirms that the European Commission has “denied” Sánchez and there will be tolls in 2024

The socialist candidate has rejected in an interview on TVE the possibility of a referendum or an amnesty. “The independence movement asked for an amnesty and it has not had it, what it has had are conditional pardons,” the socialist candidate intervened, who in that letter of introduction to the center and moderation that he has been playing in recent days has stated: “The independence movement is an out-of-date ideology from a political and effective point of view when it comes to being able to solve the serious and common problems that humanity has.”

Regarding the nationalists' request to hold a referendum or Bildu's notice that he intends to bring the right to decide to Congress in the next legislature, Sánchez rejects the idea and insists that in his five years in government no consultation has been held, while when the PP governed there were two. It's an old debate, which the right always brings out to see if they can scare some PSOE voters.”

In this campaign, Sánchez tries to install an idea that prevents voters from fleeing from the center: he has not governed with ERC and Bildu, he has agreed to laws because he did not have an absolute majority in Congress. is the message. To govern is to have ministers from a party. I have agreed with Yolanda Diaz's party. Feijóo has agreed with Vox because there are advisors from this party in community governments and town halls.”

If yesterday the PSOE presented as merit a letter signed by leaders such as the German Olaf Scholz, the Brazilian Lula or the Argentine Alberto Fernández supporting Pedro Sánchez, today the Popular Party can boast relevant support in the form of an editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

The North American financial daily analyzes the campaign of 23-J and affirms that it is “a Spanish lesson for Europe” in which “the PP demonstrates how the conservative centrists can win”.

Against the climate of tension and polarization that has been tried to install in the campaign at the national level, the Wall Street Journal assures that Spain votes this Sunday “in what promises to be refreshingly normal elections for Europe”. The newspaper reflects that the polls show that the country “will judge a center-left administration in which they have lost confidence by voting for a center-right party.”. And they add: “This is a surprise right now in Europe.”

The editorial analyzes that the “dissatisfaction” with Pedro Sánchez comes from “many angles” and recalls the confinements during the pandemic “among the strictest in Europe” and “unpopular”, while underlining a “slow” economic recovery, contrary to the data that the Government presumes.

“Mr. Sánchez has also crossed a multitude of cultural red lines in Spanish politics,” reports the Wall Street Journal, which underlines the “convenient alliances in Congress with regional separatist and communist parties.”. “It brings to light controversies related to the Franco dictatorship. Franco died in 1975”, he concludes on the management of the Government.

These ingredients, the WSJ editorial analyzes, lay the foundations for a possible victory for the Popular Party that would mean “a healthy development” by ensuring that “a center-right European party can succeed with a conservative political strategy that also appeals to centrist voters.”

The Wall Street Journal also removes weight from the expectation of a hypothetical pact with Vox. “If the Popular Party wins, it will be because it has managed to raise a large tent that can accommodate centrist liberals and some of the conservatives who defend national unity and who went to Vox in past elections,” he analyzes.. “Mr. Feijóo may need to form a coalition government with Vox, but with sufficient support he will be able to do so from a position of strength,” he says.

The editorial also ensures that the PP campaign should be “a lesson for conservatives” around the world: “It has not drifted to the left on economic or cultural issues as the British Tories or Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats in Germany have done.. Nor has it gone very far in the other direction with an all-out culture war of the sort called for by National Conservative voters, which would have alienated centrist voters.”

In this sense, the Wall Street Journal article on the 23-J elections praises that Feijóo does not promise a revolution in the style of Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher, but does offer a different model to “a right-wing version of the redistribution of the left”.

On cultural issues, the newspaper analyzes that the PP is fighting in areas where there are “great consensuses”, such as the fight against separatism and the retreat from “radical policies” carried out by Sánchez, such as the one referring to transgender policies, “at the same time that it ignores complaints from the right about homosexual marriage and other issues that society considers closed.”

«I go out with the uniform and I notice those faces of contempt simply because I am wearing green and with the flag of Spain. They disgust us more than hate». The Catalan civil guard Mila Cívico, 31 years of service and based in Barcelona, finds no trace of that “democratic normality” that, according to the Government of Pedro Sánchez, has been installed in Catalonia thanks to the deployment of a territorial policy based on the granting of the wills claimed by ERC, which has resulted in the pardon of the leaders who promoted 1-O, in the suppression of the crime of sedition and the opening of a bilateral negotiation with the pro-independence Executive of ERC to explore an agreement leading to a vote on the political future of the region.

«There is still animosity. My children cannot freely say at school that their mother is a civil guard. There is a fixation of the Government for suppressing us. The fact that there are no acts of vandalism now with the same regularity, while the Government has been agreeing, does not mean that they will not be repeated after the next elections. We are at the mercy of the desires of street violence. always on alert. Here we do not live calmly like a civil guard in Cuenca. Since 1-O they label us torturers, animals, the worst. The contempt is still felt. And we are only workers who represent our country and who try to prevent a vote contrary to the Constitution”, laments this member of the State Security Forces.

Engarza Carlos Vegas, Catalan judge “exiled in Madrid”. After a decade practicing in Catalonia, in March he left for the capital, leaving his family in Barcelona after being singled out by the Generalitat for expressing opinions contrary to the independence movement on social networks and for not abstaining in a procedure that affected the secessionist opinion maker Pilar Rahola.. «I do not judge based on whether I like an ideology or not. It was Kafkaesque, ”he denounces.

“We saved democracy in 2017 and that's how they paid us”, deplores this social magistrate who the Generalitat tried to challenge without success for all the procedures in which it was involved and for whom, also unsuccessfully, he claimed a sanction, dismissed by the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ).

«I suffered an unjustified attack from the Minister of Justice with the complicity of my own colleagues, because there is a group of judges in Catalonia who is sympathetic to the independence cause.. I am a Catalan refugee. They have not put a gun to my temple to leave, but I have not left voluntarily either. I had to leave to distance myself, despite the fact that I feel very committed to Catalonia and the things that happen there hurt me, because where they don't want you, you don't have to be, ”he says.

“Isn't it surprising that a judge is leaving Barcelona or that the reading levels of Catalan children are among the worst in Spain?” reflects the magistrate to flirt with another sphere in which appeasement is not perceived: education.

The Government tolerated that the Generalitat disobeyed the ruling of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) to implement 25% of Spanish in all schools by avoiding claiming the execution of the ruling. He participated -through the PSC- in the Government's legal maneuver to circumvent the sentence and the High Educational Inspectorate, dependent on the Ministry of Education, unflinchingly attends the hardening of immersion, which ERC carries out to veto the use of Spanish in any school space.

The professor of the University of Barcelona, Jorge Calero. PA

Ana Losada, spokesperson for Escuela de Todos, a platform created to promote the execution of the sentence that should put an end to monolingualism, diagnoses: “Not only has the law not been applied in Catalonia, it has been agreed not to apply it. Many Catalans want to stop being orphans of the Government and feel like full-fledged members of Catalonia. May the struggle to enforce the Law in this land no longer fall on our shoulders.

«The Catalan peace of Sánchez has served nationalism to reinforce the persecution of those who speak Spanish in educational centers. And that gives him the status of dissident in the Catalan educational system.

This teacher says he is “very distinguished”. «They have little room to harm me, because I am an official, but they do it in what they can. No positions are assigned to me and they have warned me that I would avoid many problems if I gave the class in Catalan ».

It concludes that in Catalonia “there is no normalization of civil life” and notes that “the support of the central government continues to develop its agenda, which involves continuing to tighten the screw and maintaining a system of exclusion of Spanish.”

«The Government is especially belligerent with the language. The official trend is that you have to speak Catalan even in private and with families. In my center the use of Spanish is not allowed beyond the disobedience that I exercise. In the last four years, the Generalitat has come to promote the denunciation of Spanish-speaking teachers with the installation of mailboxes in which students can identify teachers who, having committed to teaching their class in Catalan, decide to use the two official languages interchangeably. The university centers are forced to send the Government reports with the “linguistic incidents” detected to “correct” them.

Jorge Calero, Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Barcelona, considers that, since 2018 “and with the support of the coalition government”, “the use of Catalan as a political tool of nationalism” has been deepened with actions that “have fragmented the Spanish university system and have caused a loss of internationalization of the Catalan university”.. Actions such as “the requirement of the C1 level of Catalan for teachers”, “the commitment of Catalan universities to increase the teaching of degrees in Catalan to reach 80% in 2025”, and “the link between the greater use of Catalan and financing”. The new Organic Law of the University System (LOSU) states that “linguistic singularity will be financed”.

“Catalan universities, and in particular their government bodies, which were tools in favor of the procés, are now tools in favor of independence in the long term”, adds the professor, who highlights the “deficit of freedom of expression on Catalan campuses with frequently violent attacks on associations such as S'ha Acabat”.

Óscar Vivas, health worker in Barcelona. Araba

“The Catalan independence movement is very totalitarian and tries to ensure that no one gets out of that unique thought that they want to establish,” says the president of this association of young constitutionalists, Júlia Calvet, who has suffered first-hand attacks from the most radical secessionism.

The university student recalls that “separatism continues to control institutional, media, economic or educational power”. It is very difficult to get out of those four walls and, if you do, you risk being singled out”, he deepens.

“Nothing has changed,” agrees Óscar Vivas, a health worker who coordinated a lawsuit by 42 professionals against the oppositions of the Generalitat that set Catalan as an “exclusive requirement” to be able to compete in a public square.

«The paradigmatic case of the Andalusian nurse only made a problem that already existed more visible. There are many temporary workers asking that the Catalan requirement be suppressed. Many people whose daily lives are affected by the attempts of the Catalan Administration to coercively impose their ideological positions and to turn Catalonia into a monolingual region”, indicates Ángel Escolano, president of Civic Coexistence.

Pepe Domingo, president of Impulso Ciudadano, considers that “the solution to the danger of independence – which continues to exist – is not to weaken the defense mechanisms of the State but to reinforce them with legislative measures and, above all, with a government action aimed at correcting the constitutional disloyalty that, unfortunately, seems to be in the DNA of its political representatives”.

And Elda Mata, president of the Catalan Civil Society, believes that “the responsibility for Catalonia to continue to be conditioned by nationalism falls, first of all, on those who work and promote its survival. And secondly, about those who, having the obligation to ensure the rights of all Spaniards equally, have looked the other way whenever they have agreed to give in to nationalism, leaving the majority of Catalans helpless». «The first will continue in their line, they have not stopped announcing it. We do not lose hope that the seconds will rectify, “he claims.

WHAT THE PROGRAMS SAY

Certainly, the Catalan independence forces lost 350,000 votes in the municipal elections on May 28. Certainly, they have been unable to display an image of a reunion during the generals campaign to re-engage their voters and reverse the abstention, which is presented as their main enemy next Sunday. But no less true is that ERC and Junts can be decisive for the governability of Spain if the PP fails to add the necessary majority to remove Pedro Sánchez from the presidency.

It is obvious that the socialist will be able to continue resorting to ERC if his support is enough for him to stay in La Moncloa. The party led by Oriol Junqueras has staged a hardening of its conditions to anoint the PSOE candidate, but it will not hesitate to do so if given the opportunity, aware that the policy of concessions towards the independence movement would end abruptly if Alberto Núñez Feijóo gathers the necessary votes to be sworn in.

There are three conditions for the Republicans to return to support Sánchez: keeping the negotiation table on Catalan self-determination alive is the main. Shortly before the crash of the local elections, Pere Aragonès appointed a committee of experts that was to design a “clarity pact” to invite the State to agree to hold an internationally comparable referendum. The work of that Sanhedrin has been paralyzed until the result of the general elections is known, but ERC's commitment is to continue advancing on this path to end up demanding a secessionist vote tolerated by the Government, unlike the one organized on October 1, 2017.

If Sánchez swallows this requirement, the road will appear flat, but not expeditious, since ERC also demands the end of the “fiscal deficit” and the transfer of the Cercanías network. This last condition could be assumable in accordance with the concessions made in the expiring legislature, with the pardons and the elimination of the crime of sedition at the head. But it will be more difficult to achieve the end of this “plunder” that the Catalan independence movement has been brandishing as an electoral argument since it can remember.

In any case, this obstacle will be easier to overcome than the obstinacy of Carles Puigdemont. «Sánchez will not be president with the votes of Junts. Paying in advance to a guy you wouldn't even buy a second-hand car from is a risky sport,” the fugitive said last week.. His valid, the related Míriam Nogueras, will execute the fugitive's orders without hesitation and these go through boycotting the operation of the State as much as possible. Coming to force an electoral repetition? It is a plausible scenario for a party that wants to regain prominence to return to dispute the Generalitat with ERC as soon as possible. And what better poster than to show that secessionism is once again the main headache in Spain, contrary to what Sánchez defends, who considers Catalonia “normalized”.

That the independence movement could be decisive this 23-J does not mean that its results are going to be spectacular. The demoscopy gives the PSC a certain victory and gives the PP possibilities to follow the Catalan socialists as a second force, surpassing the two great pro-independence parties and reaching eight or nine deputies, for the current two.

Assigned the victory, that second place has become the main object of desire of the parties that wage the Catalan battle. If the PP conquered it, its resurrection in the community would be ratified and would underpin a comfortable victory for Feijóo. Meanwhile, ERC and Junts seek to prevail in their particular duel with their sights set on the next Catalan regional elections that will take place in 2025 if Aragonès does not succumb to his minority beforehand.