Smiles in the handshake, but no other hint of rapprochement. The meeting that Pedro Sánchez held this Friday with the spokesperson for Junts per Catalunya (JxCat) in the Congress of Deputies, Miriam Nogueras, has concluded without the party led by Carles Puigdemont having guaranteed its votes for the re-election of the President of the Government in functions.

“We are still far from the historic commitment,” summarized the representative of the independence party in a statement to the media after the meeting.. “We are not here to listen or to do what has been done in the last four years, because we all know and it has been proven that it has not worked,” he warned.

At the meeting, Nogueras gave Sánchez the transcript of Puigdemont's conference on September 5 in which he established the conditions of his support for the investiture: recognition of the democratic legitimacy of the independence movement and the independentistas; abandonment of “the judicial route”; an amnesty since 2014 and the creation of a mediation and supervision mechanism that serves to force its interlocutors to keep their promises, including that of a future legal referendum on self-determination.

However, the Junts spokesperson has avoided giving details about what she has discussed with the socialist candidate about these specific issues.. “We want to focus on the fact that we are in a transcendent moment, in an extraordinary moment, and we will not enter the game of headlines or leaks, because there are others for that,” he remarked..

Direct involvement

Sánchez's direct involvement in this meeting is not a trivial issue, because now he needs the independence party to change its vote against four years ago to a yes.. What has finally not occurred – or, at least, has not been publicly revealed – has been a prior contact with Puigdemont, who fled to Belgium after the illegal independence referendum of 2017, a question to which Nogueras has avoided answering..

The acting president of the Government had indeed spoken by phone on Wednesday with Oriol Junqueras, leader of ERC, before meeting with the spokesman for his group in the Lower House, Gabriel Rufián, as a gesture of “respect” after four years without relationship. direct. The teams of both interlocutors positively evaluated this step towards “political normality” in separate statements issued later.

In the meeting with Nogueras this Friday, Sánchez was accompanied by the Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, and by the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, who is the person to whom the candidate for re-election has entrusted the negotiation. with the independence parties, although he has not appeared in the photo.

Discretion

After concluding the round of contacts with all the groups except Vox, excluded from the beginning, Ferraz's negotiating commission will now hold working meetings with all the parties in which “the pace of negotiation and concretion in the negotiations will be intensified.” proposals”. These meetings, they specify, “will remain within the scope of discretion.”

“The objective is to reach the necessary agreements so that Spain has a progressive government that makes policies to expand rights for workers, young people, women and the social majority of this country,” they add in the PSOE, where they continue without giving any details. of his amnesty proposal. In this sense, they insist that “it will be supported by the constitutional framework at all times”, in addition to “transparency with citizens as soon as commitments are reached.”