The PSC lives caught in a paradox: it won Catalonia in the 23-J general elections by obtaining more than a third of the deputies in the race (19 out of 48, 1,200,000 votes), but it has little visibility, pushed out by The prominence that the pro-independence parties have acquired is crucial for the negotiations regarding the inauguration of Pedro Sánchez. With their victory on the 23rd, the Catalan Socialists came full circle: they had already won the 2021 regional elections and last May they extended their hegemony in the local elections, winning the mayoral title of Barcelona for the first time in 15 years (thanks). with support from Barcelona en Comú and the PP). However, their overwhelming victory has now been overshadowed by the privileged role that the parliamentary elections have given to the Junts and the ERC, which, despite coming fourth and fifth in Catalonia in terms of number of votes, hold the key to the ability to govern .
Salvador Illa, First Secretary of the PSC, said this summer that the Socialists would do much more than they say in this negotiation process and stressed this week that their mottos were prudence, patience, discretion and respect for the Constitution. Sources close to the investiture negotiations claim that the PSC and Illa could help normalize the relationship with Junts. In fact, the party of Carles Puigdemont, the former president who fled to Belgium, is the Socialists’ main partner in Catalan city councils and regional councils. The PSC refuses to clarify whether it plays a role in the contacts, but does not rule out the possibility that it could play that role at any time. “You have to be very discreet when negotiating. But we work with the mandate given to us by the voters who want Pedro Sánchez as president,” Illa said at the beginning of the course. Neither he nor anyone from the PSC will in any case be direct negotiators, as the PSOE will take on this role directly.
The Socialists have scheduled the celebration of their traditional Rose Festival for next Sunday in Gavà (Barcelona), and the participation of the incumbent Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is planned just two days before the start of the investiture debate of the Socialists’ popular Alberto Núñez Feijóo. His presence is interpreted as another example of the complicity between Sánchez and the PSC, the socialist formation that did the most to support the PSOE against the advance of the PP and Vox on the 23rd. After the PSC (19 seats), the Commons came second with seven seats, level with ERC and Junts; followed by PP with six and Vox with two. However, measured by the number of votes, the PP took third place, ahead of ERC and Junts. The PSC emphasizes that it has also managed to increase its gap with the popular members of this community: four years ago they surpassed them by ten seats, now by 13.
All this capital was concentrated by the sudden resignation of Meritxell Batet, leader of the Catalan Socialists in Congress and president of the chamber in the previous legislature. It’s an unusual situation: there aren’t many cases of resignations after overwhelming victories. Members of the PSC attribute his withdrawal from the political front to personal problems and claim that he had already thought about this step before the elections and that it had nothing to do with the decision of his successor, Francina Armengol, also a socialist, to initially quit Change expressed its willingness to allow the use of co-official languages from the lectern. During his term of office, Batet was characterized by a consistent interpretation of the Chamber’s rules, which led him to prevent the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician in interventions.
Under the condition that they are not allowed to excessively harass Junts or ERC, the Socialists have targeted the government of Pere Aragonès, whose budgets they supported in February and which they accuse of having implemented only 11% of the approved measures (78%) . is in progress and 11%, not yet started). There has been no progress on the major infrastructure projects agreed: they signed an agreement for the B-40, a ring road in the second ring of Barcelona, which is met with great rejection in the ERC; The El Prat airport commission has not been set up – the deadline is December – and the Hard Rock project wanted by the Socialists, a tourist and gaming complex in Tarragona, has now suffered a new decline due to the chemical danger in a neighboring polygon.
This balance is not too stimulating for the Socialists, but they find themselves in a labyrinth very similar to that of a year ago, when they supported the Aragonès bills after ERC had done the same with those of the government. The situation can be understood in this mandate, with the paradox that the PSC seems doomed to support the weak ERC government despite winning the elections. And as this path narrows, right-wing parties accuse the socialists of abandoning constitutional postulates. Salvador Illa himself, after 23-J, referred to the historical position of the PSC against amnesty and self-determination and recalled his direct rejection of the independence referendum, pointing out that the “cornerstone” of any democracy is respect for the rule of law. “We will not do anything that is outside the constitution, but we must see this situation as an opportunity and not as a curse,” he now defends the path of dialogue chosen by the government. The right has devised a strategy to equate the highlights of the trial in 2017 with the current situation.
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In this context and under the slogan “Not in my name”, Catalan civil society has organized a demonstration against the amnesty on October 8, the same day that the first major anti-independence march took place in Catalonia in 2017. This demonstration united PP, Ciudadanos and, for the first time, the PSC behind the same banner in a photo that became iconic. The Socialists have obviously distanced themselves from the protest now called, and the popular parties want to influence what they see as a contradiction, recalling that the PSOE has flatly canceled the amnesty for those accused of the Procés until July 23rd. Alejandro Fernández, leader of the Catalan PP, which is currently in an internal crisis, believes that the Socialists are outside constitutionalism and that they have already broken the spirit of October 8 by setting up the dialogue table with the Generalitat in the last legislative period have.
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