Junqueras demanded that Moncloa make a gesture to vindicate itself against Puigdemont
May 2019. Pedro Sánchez aspires, as today, to achieve a parliamentary majority sufficient to reissue his mandate. ERC is also necessary. Its leader, Oriol Junqueras, is in prison, but attends the constituent session of the Cortes with a prison permit. Shakes the hand of the sitting president in a gesture of mutual courtesy. “We have to talk,” the Republican tells him before a cloud of flashes. The pending conversation has been delayed for four years. Sánchez and Junqueras had not exchanged a word until this Wednesday, as confirmed by sources close to the Catalan.. During this time, Moncloa's interlocutor has been the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, with whom both the socialist and his emissaries have had a constant channel of communication..
What has changed? The answer lies in the reappearance of Carles Puigdemont on the political scene. The result of the polls on July 23 made the fugitive an indispensable interlocutor to secure an investiture with at least 176 votes. ERC was no longer the hegemonic force. JxCAT has been placed at the center of the equation and Junqueras has felt displaced. The Republican conveyed to Moncloa the importance of having a “gesture” with ERC that would show that it was Junts that has joined the path that his party opened years ago.. Junqueras does not forget “the sacrifices” or the cries of “traitor”. In recent days, he shared with his friends his “discomfort” about how the story of the amnesty negotiation was being written: “He didn't like the nonsense that the Junts people were bringing up.”.
In Junqueras's head was the precedent of the negotiation of the Statute of 2006. Carod-Rovira worked with Pasqual Maragall's PSC to implement a reform that CiU boycotted, accusing the Republicans of lack of ambition. Months later, Artur Mas closed with José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero the text that would end up cutting the Constitutional Court. ERC felt deceived and positioned itself against the new text under the argument that “Catalonia deserves more”. On that occasion, the lack of attention led the Republicans to break the deck. Now the blood has not reached the river, but Junqueras has been heard warning that the PSOE could find itself with “a surprise” if it did not “take care of” them..
Sánchez's call is a recognition of Junqueras in itself after the visit of Vice President Yolanda Díaz to Brussels to meet with Puigdemont. “Here the bosses have spoken,” they say from the republican formation. In addition to the staging, the message to be conveyed has also been agreed with the Moncloa.. Hence, the PSOE emphasizes that the president has thanked it for the support of the ERC group during the last legislature to achieve “important political and social advances.”. The former vice president of the Generalitat sought to value “dialogue” as a formula to advance his project for Catalonia after Puigdemont's attacks.
ERC has been penalized at the polls for its strategy of becoming Sánchez's crutch, and faced with a foreseeable electoral call for 2024 in Catalonia, it needs to make its role profitable against Junts in the negotiation of the investiture. Junqueras and Puigdemont aspire to be candidates and measure themselves as totems of sovereignty if the times for the amnesty, which will be appealed before the Constitutional Court, end up allowing it.. The Republicans need, on the one hand, to hang the medal of having been the pioneers. And, on the other hand, that not only amnesty is on the table, but also a horizon for the referendum. Yesterday, the spokesperson in Congress, Gabriel Rufián, made it a condition for voting for Sánchez, but privately the ERC leadership recognizes that it is a maximum position that will be modulated.
📰 [NEWS] @gabrielrufian, before the negotiation for the investiture: “”Our conditions ✅ are demanding but acceptable; and they are not of the party, but of the country”.
Read it here: 👇https://t.co/LfCUNLAjFy— Esquerra Republicana (@Esquerra_ERC) October 11, 2023
Junqueras has always opted for a vote for self-determination “in the long term”. They are aware that Sánchez cannot “nor does he want to” open that melon right now. The plan involves resuming the bilateral negotiation table of 2020, where it was contemplated that “the measures in which the agreements materialize will be submitted, where appropriate, to a democratic vote through consultation with the citizens of Catalonia.”. As with the amnesty, whose proposal is almost closed after being validated by ERC and pending Puigdemont's approval, a draft will be made on the referendum that meets the expectations of the Moncloa and the independentistas..
The telephone conversation between Sánchez and Junqueras is interpreted as a giant step towards closing the agreement that will allow the socialist to become president at the beginning of November.. “Now it is done,” says an ERC source who places the contacts in the final stretch, where he perceives “a lot of haste” on the part of the fugitive's emissaries.. The timing is for a representative of the socialists to meet with Puigdemont in the coming days. Everything indicates that it will be the Secretary of Organization, Santos Cerdán, working in the back rooms. The unknown is whether the fugitive will also want to receive a call from the Moncloa red phone.