Separatism resurrects the rapporteur, the demand that already strained the PSOE and forced Sánchez to call elections

If Carles Puigdemont has an obsession, it is to internationalize the independence “conflict”; that of proposing a fight between Catalonia and the State “on an equal footing”. This fixation is answered by the fact that among the conditions posed to Pedro Sánchez to support his investiture is the implementation of a “mediation and verification mechanism”, which the independence movement once called “rapporteur”.

The fugitive has been brewing that idea since he organized the illegal referendum in 2017. Puigdemont maintains that, after 1-O, states like Switzerland were willing to mediate between the Generalitat and the Government to find a way out of the constitutional crisis that would lead to the unilateral declaration of independence on October 27, in the subsequent flight of his promoter to Belgium and in the intervention of Catalan autonomy after the application of 155.

But it would be two years later, at the beginning of 2019, when the escapee would manage to drag the Executive led by Pedro Sánchez to accept that a “rapporteur” would supervise and “attest” to the bilateral negotiation that inaugurated the Pedralbes Declaration, the conclave held in Barcelona on December 20, 2018 in which the Government assumed for the first time the existence of a “conflict over the future of Catalonia.”

Quim Torra then held the presidency of the Generalitat as Puigdemont's supporter, who was the one who, from Waterloo, would telegraph the rapporteur's demand.. The then vice president of the Government, Carmen Calvo, accepted the requirement at the direction of ERC, the one in charge of greasing the relationship between the central and regional Executives through Pere Aragonès, in those days vice president of the Generalitat.

Names like that of the former president of the European Parliament Martin Schulz were being considered in Palau; that of the former president of Uruguay José Mujica or that of the former Italian prime minister, Romano Prodi. Although they would never be tested for two reasons: the Government refused to let the mediator be an international figure, as the Catalan independentists claimed, and because the reaction of the constitutionalist parties, which called for the Colón demonstration to denounce Sánchez's surrender to separatism, and the internal reluctance that the issue had generated within the PSOE ended up pushing the Government to back down.

The consequences are known: ERC and the PDeCAT – the formation heir to Convergència had not yet dissolved into Junts – knocked down the General State Budgets and the socialist president was forced to call elections.

The residue of that terrible memory still lingers in the socialist ranks, hence, of all the claims raised by Puigdemont, the rapporteur's is the one that bothers the Government the most.

“Typical of armed conflicts”

The former deputy of the commons Jaume Asens, who has been acting as a link between the Executive and Junts, recognized after Puigdemont's conference that a “mediator” is “typical of armed conflicts” and that he finds it difficult to fit this controversial figure into the investiture talks. “When we talk about an international, neutral rapporteur, it seems to me that it is difficult to accept, because it would lengthen the process a lot and it is still a negotiation between parties,” concluded the former parliamentarian who promoted the first contact between the Government and Puigdemont through of Vice President Yolanda Díaz.

Asens saw it as more feasible to appoint a “facilitator to coordinate the work”, a type of supervisor who should not necessarily have an international profile.. In the Government, however, they work with another idea. They consider that the former president was sufficiently ambiguous when speaking of a “mediation or verification mechanism” so that he ended up tolerating that this function be exercised by “a monitoring commission.”. The formula is too similar to the negotiation table agreed between Sánchez and ERC, which will probably end up being discarded by Junts.

The post-convergents demand “collecting the investiture in advance” and that means leaving the amnesty law approved, but also agreeing on this mediation mechanism so that the subsequent negotiation on self-determination has “guarantees” of moving forward.

Basically, there is a fear in Junts of ending up being singled out by the secessionist parish, which has been cruel to ERC for its negotiation with the Sánchez Government and which has punished it by leading it to lose more than 300,000 votes in the municipal elections and 400,000 in the general ones. The fugitive wants someone to prove that his negotiations with the State were compromised before the investiture and that he is successful so as not to suffer wear and tear like that suffered by Aragonès.. His ultimate objective in this negotiation is to return freely to Spain without going to jail or being disqualified in order to once again run for the presidency of the Generalitat.