The great elephant of Spanish politics is still Catalonia. And the results on Sunday have once again raised Carles Puigdemont to the rump of the pachyderm. If the Carthaginian Aníbal crossed the Alps on the back of such an extravagant company, the former president of the Generalitat will have to decide in the coming months if he is encouraged to cross the Pyrenees, even if for now only symbolically, to promote the re-election of Pedro Sánchez as president of the Government. That's how diabolical are the caroms that occur in the billiards of politics
The worst results of Catalan nationalism —now sovereignism— since 1982 (42.7% of the vote in 2019, 28.1% on Sunday) are paradoxically those that give it the most weight when it comes to avoiding a situation of blockade of the governability of Spain that leads to new elections. Discounting the ERC's support for Pedro Sánchez, and knowing that Bildu will not bet on electoral repetition either, everything depends on how Aníbal-Puigdemont decides to behave with the bridles of his elephant.
The invoice that Carles Puigdemont announced in the campaign to make Pedro Sánchez president is unaffordable for the PSOE. Amnesty and self-determination (referendum) seem too bitter pills even for a sanchismo energized by Sunday's results. However, nothing is impossible in politics.. Yesterday, the general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, stated that right now he did not see the investiture of Pedro Sánchez anywhere. We italicize right now because time is always the key ingredient of politics. And what today is not, maybe it will be tomorrow. The fruit must always ripen on the tree. And along the way save added difficulties, such as yesterday the Prosecutor's Office asking Judge Llarena to reactivate the search and arrest warrant for the former president of the Generalitat or that Clara Ponsatí forced her arrest in Barcelona. It will not be easy to solve this puzzle.
Puigdemont, who is the one who will end up deciding the negotiation conditions and the result of this by Junts, has Spain in his hands. That, as long as we assume that Pedro Sánchez wants to speed up his re-election chances by negotiating with the former Catalan president installed in Waterloo and not settle for a blockade that leads us back to the polls in the second round.. Subscriber to the impossible, it is normal to think that Sánchez will continue to militate in the Yankee logic that if life gives you lemons, it is time to make lemonade. In other words, if Junts is part of the equation, then we will have to try our luck with them.
The truth is that the former president of the Generalitat cannot be satisfied with the price that Oriol Junqueras' republicans have already set and that it does not represent a problem for the socialists. not today at least. The ERC proposal to Sánchez to make him president (new financing, transfer of commuter services, shielding of Catalan and maintenance of the Government-Generalitat negotiating table) has been repeatedly ridiculed by Junts. So to twist the will of Carles Puigdemont something more should be added to the balance. But the truth is that there is not much more that can be accepted by the PSOE, which presumably will remain firm in refusing the self-determination referendum.. New forms of pardon could be part of a secret pact with Junts, as happened in 2019 in the negotiation with ERC, in which pardons did not appear as a condition of the investiture pact. This is the easiest assignment for Pedro Sánchez, since he has already put it into practice once.
Junts has acted with skill once the results were known and after becoming aware of the key role that it is in a position to play. The first thing he has done is set as a priority that the negotiations start with ERC, to agree on a common negotiation strategy for the independence movement with Pedro Sánchez. Gabriel Rufián, by order of Oriol Junqueras, had also requested the same thing on the night of the scrutiny.
Notice to all the “experts” who always know what @JuntsXCat needs to do (and always talk bad about it, or belittle their position): Junts owes nothing to anyone but its voters. Neither to clever political scientists, nor to various talk shows, nor to Twitter pseudonyms, nor to…
— krls.eth / Carles Puigdemont (@KRLS) July 23, 2023
This negotiation between independentists to determine the price of the new investment could make ERC's price more expensive due to Junts' pressure and at the same time make the latter's price cheaper. Or simply mark the differences again between some Republicans prone to investing Sánchez with a certain ease and some firm Puigdemontists in the maximalism of the blockade. Too early to make statements and venture hypotheses.
If there is something that plays in favor of Pedro Sánchez it is the Catalan electoral map of this 23-J. The PSOE, the first force in Catalonia with 19 seats (+7) and Sumar, second with seven deputies, have swept away the independence movement. The whole of Catalonia has been painted red and the results of sovereignty —disguised by the key to the governability of Spain, in the hands of republicans and puigdemontistas— have been a disaster. The CUP has disappeared from the map and even the PP (six deputies, +4) has surpassed both ERC and Junts in absolute votes (seven deputies each), although this superiority has not been transferred to the numerical number of seats.
An electoral repetition is unknown in Catalonia. But Puigdemont is not in a position to ensure that new elections will not mean even greater damage to the independence movement. This element plays clearly in favor of the aspirations of Pedro Sánchez. To this we should add that in the ranks of Junts there will not be unanimity regarding what must be done if the socialist candidate for re-election does not open the door of amnesty and self-determination. The discrepancies between the most pragmatic and the most irredeemable will surface again. But neither one thing —uncertainty in the face of new elections— nor the other —internal disagreements— are going to be a serious problem for Carles Puigdemont who, with a simple raise or drop of his thumb, will decide what he considers appropriate..
The waiting compass opens. What must be cooked in one way or another will require its cooking time. But the paradox is simply phenomenal: at the moment of Carles Puigdemont's greatest legal weakness, after the last sentence of the TGUE, parliamentary arithmetic has placed the governability of Spain in his hands, also coinciding with the elections in which the parties of Catalan obedience have deflated the most since 1982.. that's the policy.
For the rest, Puigdemont aside, it must be noted that the PSOE has hit the jackpot in Catalonia. It is this community that has acted as a stopper for a PP-Vox government that was already taken for granted. Sánchez took a risk with pardons and the reform of the Penal Code. But what he could have lost in Spain as a whole due to these decisions, he has compensated with votes and deputies in Catalonia.
In fact, if today we are talking, discussing and writing about these issues in particular, it is precisely because of the operation to save soldier Sánchez that the majority of the Catalan electorate has carried out. Abascal's threat a few days before the elections, announcing greater tension in Catalonia in 2024 than in 2017 if PP and Vox governed jointly, helps to understand a good part of what happened.