Puigdemont is pessimistic about the negotiations for the investiture

Carles Puigdemont held a meeting yesterday with senior officials of JxCAT in the south of France in which he was pessimistic about the progress of the talks for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, according to sources from this group familiar with the progress of the meeting.. The reasons are that there is no agreement on key points such as the declaration of reasons for the amnesty law or the figure of the international mediator demanded by the independentists.. Three weeks left and talks with JxCAT seem stuck.

Carles Puigdemont has been negotiating a key investiture for the future of JxCAT as a party for two months, despite the fact that he does not have any organic position in the party beyond having founded it and now being a grassroots activist.. However, he has assumed the dialogue with Moncloa based on his moral authority. The conversations, from what he said yesterday, are not at their best moment.

Among those attending this meeting were the general secretary of the party, Jordi Turull, the group's spokesperson in Parliament, Albert Batet; the president of the party, Laura Borràs; the speaker, Josep Rius and the speaker in Congress, Míriam Nogueras.

Puigdemont, who had been the one who called the meeting, came to inform them that the issue was no longer in his hands, but depended on the PSOE making a move because he had reached his limit.. Puigdemont's tone contrasts with the optimism that ERC communicates in its statements about the progress of the talks.

In essence, Carles Puigdemont explained that today the conditions to invest Pedro Sánchez are not met.. There is still one month left, until November 27, but the deadlines are now increasingly playing against the negotiators.

The former Catalan president explained that there is still no agreement on the preamble to the amnesty law, which the Government wants to be a prologue that justifies the Supreme Court's ruling on the process, as a guarantee that it will then be able to pass the filter of the Constitutional. But Puigdemont's party refuses this approach, basically because it means recognizing that the attempted breakup in October 2017 was a defeat, in part because they want the preamble of this legal text to imply a kind of apology from the Spanish State for what that they consider repressive excesses before the process.

Back to the mediator

Another point of conflict is the international mediator, on whom there is also no agreement. In Moncloa they completely reject this figure and limit themselves to proposing a monitoring commission made up of 50% by each of the parties.. But this seems absolutely insufficient to Puigdemont, according to sources familiar with the ins and outs of the negotiation..

Finally, the topic of the official status of Catalan in the EU was touched on, and here Puigdemont warned his interlocutors that it is no longer certain that Catalan will be official in Europe before the investiture, so there would be no possibility of holding on to that nail either. ablaze.

The former president asked JxCAT to remain faithful to his package of demands presented at his conference in Brussels last September: not to renounce unilateralism, international mediation and total decriminalization of the events of the process and the subsequent protests..

Turull will inform

Next Monday, Jordi Turull has called a party executive in Barcelona to inform the party of the progress of the talks.. Meanwhile, in the Consell of the Republic the vote promoted by critics of Puigdemont will end, demanding that nothing be negotiated with the Spanish Government and even less an amnesty that in the most radical sectors is experienced as a surrender.