The pressure cooker of Catalan politics is boiling over. Pending issues are piling up – infrastructure, education, health, drought, among many others – and they remain on the table without a Government that takes action and assumes responsibility. The lost decade, said Salvador Illa in the electoral campaign. And the decade is not over. This week we face the (pen)ultimate round of negotiations from which an agreement between PSC and ERC must emerge to invest the socialist leader. Illa is willing to take on the challenge, but the conversations do not end up putting the bell on the cat. “On Tuesday everything was cut short,” says a socialist leader who transmits an idea: “Pessimism.” But it is not only the feeling of the socialists. This “pessimism” is also felt in the ERC, but in the republican pressure cooker we must add a high level of discontent among the rank and file with the leadership following the episode of internal dirty war that has been uncovered in recent days. The derogatory posters promoted from within against Ernest Maragall with the aim of provoking solidarity towards him and his brother Pasqual, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s (official version), or to defenestrate him as a candidate for mayor of Barcelona (unofficial version) have opened a schism between the 8,700 Esquerra militants and their leaders. And they are the ones who will have the last word in the consultation (undated) that the leadership will call to ratify or not the agreement.
“The bases are not there for that”
–ratify the agreement–, says a Republican leader concerned about the resolution of the first problem facing ERC, without forgetting the second: the election of the new leader at the end of November. Marta Rovira has evolved since she arrived in Spain after the amnesty was applied to her. She has gone from saying no to the PSC to seeking a meeting point. The published polls, and surely the internal ones of ERC that have not seen the light of day, predict a disaster. The CEO poll (the Catalan CIS) was generous, giving a range between 19 and 24 seats. The reality is that analysing the guts of the poll, ERC could lose up to 5 deputies. The same as what was indicated by the NC Report for LA RAZON, published on Saturday.
Oriol Junqueras is discreetly keeping a low profile on this issue and is devoting himself body and soul to building enough complicity to return to the presidency of the party. But this very position increases uncertainty, because Junqueras is not going to burn himself out in this first sprint that the party must face. He prefers that Marta Rovira burn herself out. However, there are no two without three, and in ERC there is a current that defends a full stop: forcing elections and a radical change in the leadership that leaves behind the leaders of the “procés” and those who have clumsily managed the cartel crisis.
The negotiations are still under a high level of secrecy. Rovira and Illa oversee them but have not yet entered the arena. Yet. Josep Maria Jové, the current leader in the Parliament, has the reins of the different negotiating tables – infrastructure, language, financing, country model – and direct contact with Moncloa through the minister Félix Bolaños. The pact must be closed in Catalonia, as the PSC defends, but no one can escape the fact that, with financing being the Gordian knot of the conversations, Madrid has to be aware, because any agreement reached “will raise a lot of noise because the PP will use it and open a new front against Sánchez,” the PSC reflects.
Despite the prevailing pessimism, no one is throwing in the towel. The central government and the acting government of the Generalitat took a firm step towards the transfer of Rodalies. No one can ignore that this is the response to Rovira’s requests to begin to specify what was agreed. A gesture to overcome the starvation of the debate on financing. ERC asks to collect all taxes, and the PSC –with Montero behind it– refuses, proposing to develop the Statute with the agreement between the tax administrations. The positions are bitter and slowed down a week before the deadline set by Marta Rovira: the end of July. The alarms are all on in search of that middle ground that allows ERC to sell it as a success and the PSC, too.
It’s not all bad news for the parties involved. Even for the Comunes, for whom a repeat election could be lethal, because Podemos, which won the European elections in Catalonia, intends to stand. They are the third party in contention along with ERC and PSC but they are passing through without pain or glory despite being the culprits of the early elections. And their leader, Ada Colau, is still missing. The CEO gave a breath of fresh air by making it clear that Puigdemont is dissolving with the passing of days. Success is one more deputy and failure, as LA RAZÓN also pointed out, is that the former president is not taking off. Carles Puigdemont, they say, is considering returning to Spain and even being arrested to force ERC. To the leadership, to put it between a rock and a hard place so that it does not support Illa’s investiture with him in prison, and to the bases, to resurrect the feeling of unity in the face of state attacks and repression. For the moment, he has not made any move beyond a ridiculous support demonstration, a CDR riot in front of the ERC headquarters and the preparation of a large support event in France for the 27th that is failing before it even begins.
There are nine days left that promise to be heart-stopping, although the secrecy of the negotiations is the only sign that they are alive. For the moment, pessimism, a good formula to ease tension, say circles of ERC and PSC, but with a fixed date: the 31st, decision. Catalonia will then know if it has a president and a new government. It will know if decisions are beginning to be made and issues that have been in the drawer for a decade are unblocked.