Puigdemont is very attentive to everything that is happening in Madrid and to the signs, more evident every day, that the investiture majority is hurt by fissures that transcend the electoral context, although Moncloa makes an effort to explain in the European elections, and in the new campaign that begins today, the parliamentary disagreements with their partners.
The withdrawal “in extremis” of the Land Law, so as not to lose a new vote after this week's defeat in the regulation of prostitution, has been followed by the clash within the coalition in up to five other votes in the Plenary of the Congress, in which the PSOE and Sumar voted divided. That of the Sahara, (the PSOE against and Sumar in favor), Ukraine (PSOE in favor and Sumar against), investing 2 percent of the GDP in Defense (PSOE in favor and Sumar against), respect for human rights in dictatorships in Latin America (PSOE in favor and Sumar against) and free elections in Venezuela (PSOE in favor and Sumar against).
In Madrid, the Congress of Deputies has become the irrefutable showcase of an investiture majority that is incapable of reaching minimal consensus to govern. And while, in Catalonia, the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont has begun to air, in telephone conversations and in the exchange of mobile messages, the warning that he is willing to go as far as the motion of censure if the PSC executes its pact with ERC and does not allow his investiture attempt to go ahead.
It is possible to think that it is a pressure strategy in the behind-the-scenes negotiations on the future of the Generalitat, which is currently very conditioned and slowed down by the European elections. And that Puigdemont, consequently, is bluffing. This is the thesis of Moncloa and the PSC, where they are convinced that Junts will never dare to participate in a motion of censure to overthrow Pedro Sánchez with the help of the PP and Vox. His messages are “bluster” from someone who, according to his analysis, knows that he has lost everything and that he has to take a step back.
Beyond the literalness of the messages that Puigdemont conveys, those around him, where they know him well, do not believe that he is retreating either. Although there is a veil of silence about the negotiation in Catalonia, Junts knows, within the mutual knowledge that the two pro-independence parties have with each other, that the Republicans need to let Salvador Illa's investiture pass, whatever it may be, because they do not even have a leader with which to participate again in an electoral process (Oriol Junqueras would remain disqualified despite the amnesty, or at least this is the “song” that comes to them from the courts).
This coincides with what transpires in ERC. His two conditions for Illa's investiture are two demands also from Junts, and that ERC wants to appropriate in its state of almost death, which would be the fiscal pact and the referendum. But within ERC, if you scratch a little, you see that the crisis is so deep that they do not rule out that, even without achieving these two demands, they end up looking the other way and letting Illa govern.
This scenario leaves Puigdemont and Junts out of the game, as the Socialists highlight, but we will have to see what Puigdemont does after 9J and once it is confirmed where the former Minister of Health's pacts are progressing. The former president of the Generalitat has also received the idea spread by Moncloa that, even if he withdraws the support of his seven deputies in Madrid, this will not have consequences on the duration of the legislature, because Sánchez will not call general elections.
But the future after 9J remains to be written. This official message from Moncloa must be subjected to the sifting of the electoral context and the fact that we are in a moment in which all the parties are playing tricks, even knowing that it is inevitable that the moment will come in which the departure of muses cannot be stretch more. Thus, the signals that Sánchez sends about his willingness to continue in Moncloa, despite the fact that he cannot pass a single bill, could be reversed in a matter of months, to the extent that the wear and tear of the bunkerization in the Government, without legislative capacity, is very large. Personally and also for the party's acronym.
The PSOE spokespersons came out yesterday in a rush to “sell” the theory that its parliamentary weakness is absolutely circumstantial, and that it will be recomposed after the European elections. Despite the fact that the “feedback” that comes to them from their partners is just the opposite.
After 9J, the partners, who are all damaged from this last electoral cycle, will need to mark their differences with the PSOE even more. In some cases also with a deep need for revenge, because they feel like victims of their pacts with the PSOE.
Thus, the PNV, once it ties up the Lendakaritza, and after it has learned from the mistakes made, will not, in any case, go hand in hand with Sumar at all. ERC will have to raise the bar of its demands if it does not want to end up becoming a subsidiary party of the socialists in Catalonia and in Madrid in the event that Illa's investiture is confirmed.
In fact, this socialist thesis that everything will be settled the day after the European elections, and that the partners will come to their senses again and be more collaborative, is, according to ERC, “a conscious hoax.”
The partners and Sumar may want Sánchez to remain in power, but they also want to see how he bleeds out in Moncloa, in a similar proportion to the damage that his agreements with the socialists have done to them.