The imminent holding of general elections and the plausible change of cycle in the governability of the State has a full impact on the plans of Pere Aragonès to negotiate an independence referendum agreed with the Government and internationally comparable.

The president of the Generalitat commissioned a council of wise men designated for the occasion a month and a half ago to design a clarity agreement for the Canadian company to establish the bases for the independence vote. The Sanhedrin report was to be ready this June, to later discuss it at a table with the Catalan political groups, but, as EL MUNDO has learned, the Generalitat transferred its experts last week who have until September to present their conclusions. The intention is clear: to freeze the draft of the referendum until checking whether Pedro Sánchez continues to govern; until knowing if in La Moncloa an interlocutor in favor of the bilateral negotiation with the Generalitat is still installed.

Sources from this group of experts consider, however, that the results of the municipal elections -in which ERC was severely punished- and the forecasts for the general elections “dynamit everything”. It should be remembered that Aragonès opened up to modifying his party's roadmap after losing 302,000 votes in local elections to move from a solo dialogue with the State to a “common front” with the group of pro-independence forces. It did so knowing that Junts and the CUP favor the unilateral path to consummate secession.

It so happens that the repudiation of the negotiation with the PSOE is also gaining ground among the ERC militancy, especially among its critical sector. This is how he was transferred to the leadership in an assembly held last Tuesday and chaired by the president of the party, Oriol Junqueras and his general secretary Marta Rovira.

Negotiation phase “exhausted”

Militants belonging to the so-called Col lectiu Primer d'Octubre told the party leadership that “the strategy carried out so far must be reversed”. «The negotiation strategy has not given results, this phase has been exhausted, it has not broadened the base and, therefore, it is necessary to move from the policy of facilitating things in Madrid and talking to putting sticks in the wheels of the State as well. that the State is putting sticks in our wheels,” defended Xavier Martínez, leader of the critical group of Republicans.

In conversation with this newspaper, Martínez maintains that the clarity agreement was not even addressed in the assembly despite constituting the central element of the negotiating strategy defended by the ERC leadership. “It is part of this stage that has not obtained results”, adds the spokesman for the Col·lectiu Primer d'Octubre, who defends other actions such as “always speak Catalan in Congress”.

During the internal meeting, militants who questioned the continuity of Gabriel Rufián as a candidate for the generals also took the floor. “They have pulled straight, pressured by the calendar,” says Martínez, who clarifies that they will fight to include Congress in other places on the ERC list in voices of the critical sector.

The reaction of the Republican leadership was to avoid self-criticism. Junqueras argued that, “despite the fact that those of the municipal elections were not the expected results, they were the second best results in the history of ERC”, which in 2019 won the local elections in Catalonia for the first time.

Rovira, for his part, intervened from Geneva to allege that abstention was the central element that harmed the Republicans and underlined that what did the most damage to the party was the loss of votes among “the most convinced independentista”. That one that warns in the negotiation with the Government and the pact of clarity an erroneous strategy.