Pedro Sánchez has to handle his last bullet of this legislature in Catalonia. In a week the results of the regional elections will be known, and the president has found in the Catalan climate the balm to heal the wounds of his “resignation operation” and also those left by his public exhibitions throughout the rest of the Spanish territory. That heat that he finds in the Catalan street does not change the substantial problem that he faces in these elections, and that derives from the fact that he has only one bullet to place former minister Salvador Illa in the Presidency of the Generalitat without being neither ERC nor Junts rebel in Madrid.
With ERC it seems to be easier, or so the president's team believes. The Republicans are in low spirits, they consider their chances of holding on even as runners-up lost, and they are preparing for an internal crisis where Oriol Junqueras's entourage may believe that the time has come to pass the bill to Pere Aragonès now. his body guard. From this situation of weakness of ERC, the socialists are counting on the negotiation of Illa's investiture, with the polls confirming his victory, to end up being a long process of tug-of-war, but with the Republicans forced to lower their heads and give in. the formation of a new tripartite because going to a repeat election would be suicide.
The letter and the victimization of the President of the Government had a first positive impact in the Catalan polls in favor of the PSC, but there remains a final week where it is difficult to anticipate whether this first good effect can be maintained, once, except for surprise, the feeling that is being imposed is that the story of democratic regeneration has no development that would allow Pedro Sánchez's announcement to be grounded in concrete decisions that give credibility to the word of the Chief Executive.
Illa is much more restrained than Moncloa in his forecasts for 12M. He is aware that he is in a position to win the elections, but he does not risk the bet that he will be able to govern, which would mean leaving him in the same situation in which he was left after the previous elections. The amnesty has not been Fierabrás' balm for Illa, but rather a measure much more subject to the current needs of the PSOE in Madrid, since it does not arouse enthusiasm in around half of its voters. In his fair balance, he doesn't add to it, but it doesn't hurt him either.
In this final week of the campaign, it is also very difficult for the president to be able to make his aforementioned speech of democratic regeneration materialize to use it as an electoral pull in favor of Illa, and to confront it with the message of the right. There are no concrete measures, the issue of getting hands on critical media (according to Moncloa, which relies on the sale of hoaxes) is a slippery wire, and the fight with the PP over the General Council of the Judiciary has very little real capacity for impact on the street, and many risks before Brussels, if the Government opts for the path of lowering the majorities necessary to elect the new Council.
Missing from this sum of elements is the last actor who should also fall on 12M with this last bullet from Sánchez: former president Carles Puigdemont and Junts. The mood in Puigdemont's party is much more optimistic than in ERC, largely because with the second position in hand, those close to the former president believe that he will fight “life or death” to win the Presidency of the Generalitat. The PSC cannot give it to them because it would mean their political extinction forever, and they say in Catalonia that not even Sánchez can burn one of the most important federations of the PSOE, today the only one of importance. We will have to see it.
It is a true fact that the Catalan socialists also do not believe what comes from Madrid that there is no need to worry because as soon as Puigdemont proves that he has no chance of consummating his assault on the Generalitat, to complete ERC's revenge, “he will give a “I step to the side to go find tranquility and comfort in his house.” This would corroborate the idea that what he was really looking for was amnesty, and that his independence struggle ends with the forgiveness of the criminal debts that he had with the “procés.”
It will be time that puts everyone in their place and clarifies what part of reality there is in what his most trusted relatives say that Puigdemont will not simply go home after the elections if he does not achieve his political objectives. «Before going home, he will kill Sánchez (politically). And from there, let everyone draw their own conclusions.” Puigdemont's incentives to continue supporting Sánchez after an election, in which he is left out of the Generalitat, are what they are, and those around Puigdemont describe them as “insignificant”, because they would be out of Catalan power and four years of new elections to use them again as a pressure mechanism. And this is where that triple pirouette comes into play that advocates that Illa end up sacrificing herself and letting the independence movement govern to save the Presidency of the Government and his friend Pedro.