Miriam Nogueras, leader of other Junts deputies, on Wednesday upon her arrival at the investiture session of Pedro Sánchez in Congress.Claudio Alvarez
The process has a date of birth: September 20, 2012. The slamming of the door on the fiscal compact demanded by President Artur Mas by the PP government, especially after the Court’s ruling, gave rise to the idea that there was only the possibility of a unilateral attack. Constitution to statute. But also, since last Thursday there is a date of death. The 14 votes of Junts and ERC for Pedro Sánchez in return for the amnesty have completed the turnaround that puts the constitutional framework as the only possible one to resolve the political conflict. The race to the next Catalan elections in 2025 will be the winter palace for parties that do not abandon their ideology but face major doubts about how an already demobilized electorate will digest the change in level and fear of the emergence of new competitors.
The preamble to the amnesty law, drawn up by the PSOE in separate tables with Junts and ERC, attests to the change in what had characterized the process so far, although the content of the conflict remains unresolved. “The objectives to be pursued within the constitutional framework are diverse. However, all paths must run within the national and international legal order,” it says in a text full of references to the constitution. It’s not the only movement. Junts, the main critic of the ERC’s actions towards the Socialists since the motion of censure against Mariano Rajoy, now also wants to explore the possibilities of a dialogue in which the only noticeable difference from what the Republicans have done is the role of an international auditor.
The battle between the ERC’s possibilistic strategy and the Junts’ confrontational strategy has characterized Catalan politics over the last five years. But both parties insist that they will give up “no way” to achieve their goal, taking refuge in elements that are more rhetorical than effective. At his conference in Brussels in September, Carles Puigdemont himself warned Sánchez that if he sought Junts as a partner, he would have to accept that it was a party that would never rule out unilateralism “as a legitimate resource to assert its rights.” The general secretary of the Junts, Jordi Turull, assured TV3 last week that his party was responsible for “more than half” of the text, without clarifying whether this also included the acceptance of good approaches that until recently were considered in the neo-convergent party were considered heretical. .
“The ERC played music four years ago and now everyone is dancing to it,” said ERC spokesman Gabriel Rufián to his Junts colleague Míriam Nogueras in his speech last Thursday in the investiture debate. It was not only a welcome for the dialogue, but also for the republican processing of the events in 2017. Already in the elections of 21-D, which were called by 155, Junts saw a mandate in the illegal referendum of 1-O, the ERC The program raised the flag of “bilateral negotiations” and abandoned the unilateral path when they realized that there was neither the citizen power, sustained over time, nor the international recognition to defend it.
Pedagogical work for ERC and Junts
The PSOE’s dependence on the two pro-independence groups is frightening in certain sectors, which remember how the fierce competition between Junts and ERC shook the investiture agreement on several occasions. And there is nothing to suggest that everyday parliamentary life is immune from these dynamics. However, as long as dialogue forums are set up and the foreseeable legal battle for an amnesty is managed, everyone will continue to be in the same boat and the tone of the confrontation does not seem to be particularly appropriate. With seven seats each, everything seems to indicate that at the moment in Congress the priority is for everyone to organize their House of Representatives: the ERC assumes that it no longer alone decides on Sánchez’s moves, and Junts is focused on creating a superficial one Story about underpinning unyielding partner.
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“Currently the independence movement is stronger in Madrid than in Catalonia. And that worries me a lot,” said Artur Mas in an interview with TV-3 last Friday. The former president made it clear that ERC, Junts and CUP have 73 deputies in parliament, which is far above the absolute majority of 68, but has no real impact either at the sectoral level or on national ambitions. The latest barometer of the Catalan CIS, also published last week, even warns that for the first time this majority, maintained over time, risks not repeating itself, which would open the door for the PSC to reach Palau.
President Pere Aragonès at the inauguration of a wastewater treatment plant in Rubí on Friday.David Zorrakino (Europa Press)
Independence unity is not expected. Even now, in Junts, there are those who insist on the idea that the ERC has abandoned its promise of independence – this idea has been at the heart of the debate about the collapse of the government in 2022 – and there are those who outright mock them Republicans defend that it is possible to expand the “base of independence” and raise the flag of dialogue. But now the same criticism is being leveled at Puigdemont and his followers, from previously related areas. “It is terrible that those who had raised the banner of resistance against the repressive policies of the state towards the independence movement have finally come to the conclusion that it is worth casting their vote for the installation of a Spanish president,” lamented the MEP Clara Ponsatí last Friday. in an interview with RNE.
The one who was education minister in the 19th century and who fled to Brussels with Puigdemont to avoid a reaction to the Spanish justice system also offered to help create “new political instruments” that would allow the “restart of the independence movement”. . The rhetoric has gone to extremes, and Junts can no longer monopolize the unequivocal defense of one-sidedness. The ERC was years ahead in the process of sensitizing its electorate to the changes and now it is Junts who has to go through this ordeal. Last week’s internal consultation on the arrangements saw a “yes” vote of 86% of participants (67% of the census), but almost 14% were against.
With electoral potential uncertain, Ponsatí wants to reach this space. But she’s not the only one who’s interested. The Catalan National Assembly (ANC) has also raised its hand, which is not giving up its idea of presenting its own lists of citizens. “If the parties do not achieve independence, we are determined to do it ourselves, using elections and, if necessary, with new actors,” explained the president of the entity during the last Diada, Dolors Feliu. The ANC, with its divided leadership, sees the betrayal of Junts and ERC as the right time to implement its plan. The xenophobic Aliança Catalana party is also waiting in the chapel. Its visible face, the mayor of Ripoll, Sílvia Orriols, sees it possible to exploit the social and national disillusionment to her advantage and is already trying to build a territorial network to support her.
Fall of the independence movement
But while the pro-independence unit fights for a few seats, a new candidacy that gains support but fails to prevail could radically change the outcome. The citizens of Puigdemont, for example, still remember the 77,000 votes that the party from which they split, the PDeCAT, received in the 2021 Catalan elections… If there had been a neo-convergent coalition, the Junts would have been in the party retain the independence bloc and the story would be completely different.
But the spirit that really haunts the analysis and perspective meetings of Republicans and city councilors is different. In local elections, 300,000 pro-independence voters stayed home or voted for other parties, and on June 26 that number doubled. The demobilization of this electorate is a matter of great concern. ERC currently wants to sell its management. A discourse that has previously been demonized as “autonomist”. But the Generalitat, with a budget of more than 41,000 million euros and more than 360 positions of trust (with an average salary of 84,000 euros, including city councilors), might seem like a mere winter palace, but it is much more than that.
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