The meeting held on Friday afternoon in Switzerland between the leader of the Junts, Carles Puigdemont, and the PSOE’s secretary of organization, Santos Cerdán, was as bad as both parties had predicted. Transformed into a crossroads of reproaches for the non-compliance attributed by both sides with the agreements reached just a year ago for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, the meeting served above all to confirm that the government will not be able to count on new opinions, with the seven votes of the Catalan independentists in the Congress of Deputies.
In the PSOE, aware for weeks that the agreement with the ERC to invest Salvador Illa represented a turning point in the relationship with Junts, the result of the meeting was not surprising. The last votes of the citizens of Puigdemont in Congress, their votes added to those of the PP and Vox to deliver the parliamentary defeats to the Executive, and the explicit messages of the former president on his social networks, did not leave much room for the reconstruction of the bridges.
“We already know that Puigdemont is a bit in his thing. We are above the others,” a senior Ferraz official summed up on Monday at the conclusion of the meeting in Switzerland. What the socialists are slipping in with these references to “their thing” is that they have found a former president who is stuck in his procedural situation, outside the benefit of the amnesty law by decision of the Supreme Court. Something that the Executive is expressly criticized for.
“It did not depend on us,” stresses another senior PSOE official, who recalls that the main commitment acquired in exchange for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez has been assumed and executed. “We have fulfilled our commitment to approve an amnesty law that is in force and that has required a lot of effort, a lot of wear and tear for months. But we are respecting our agreements,” stresses the same source.
In public, the PSOE spokesperson limited herself to responding to journalists that Friday’s meeting had brought “nothing new”. “It was an ordinary meeting and we don’t discuss meetings, we communicate agreements. And at the moment, there is nothing new to communicate,” said Esther Peña.
The government already assumes that the next steps in Congress will also be rejected by the Junts. The most immediate is expected for next Thursday, when a path to stability will be voted on again, which involves 11.5 billion euros of additional tax margin for communities and municipalities and which, politically, is considered the prelude to the general state budgets. This path, once again defended by the Council of Ministers at the beginning of September, was already reversed in July by the PP, Vox and Junts. A similar situation that could happen again this week unless, as some parliamentary sources among the PSOE partners point out, the Executive decides at the last minute to withdraw from the agenda to avoid a new image of parliamentary defeat.
“We have made it clear. If the same proposal that was voted against is presented, it will obviously be voted against. If it is modified, the modification will be analyzed and the vote will be decided. “No one should be surprised,” warned this Monday the secretary general of Junts, Jordi Turull. On his social networks, Carles Puigdemont also highlighted this path after the meeting with Santos Cerdán, although he wanted to separate it from any double political reading. “Our vote on the spending ceiling will not be decided with the objective of stabilization or exhaustion but rather based on what is on the negotiating table for this specific case. Each thing has its negotiation and its objectives. And we must negotiate piece by piece.” And regarding the future of the legislative body, he warned: “Agreeing on one issue does not prejudge that we will already agree on the next issue. And conversely: the fact that we do not agree on one does not presuppose that we will not agree on the next either.”
In the press conference that followed the Executive on Monday, the PSOE focused on directly questioning Alberto Núñez Feijóo and the regional presidents of the PP in order not to abandon the path to stability. And they directly ignored the seven Junts deputies of the parliamentary equation. “If the Popular Party votes against the path of the deficit, it is likely that the government will lose the vote. This is the least important thing, because what is certain is that Mr. Feijóo will lose any opportunity to present himself to the Spanish people as a state politician,” said the socialist spokesperson, Esther Peña.
With this parliamentary horizon of majority right-wing opposition, the expectations that exist in Moncloa regarding the execution of the General State Budgets are, today, at a minimum. The scenario envisaged is now directly that of an extension of the accounts for the second consecutive year to January 1, 2025.
“Our obligation is to work so that they come out (…) it would be better to have the Budgets, but if that is not possible, it is obvious that there are some in progress,” said the new Minister of Digital Transformation and Public Services, Óscar López, during a interview on TVE.
Within the PSOE, however, some prefer to see a crack open in the medium term and are hoping for the reconstruction of the parliamentary majority that installed Pedro Sánchez as president less than a year ago. Although they admit that this perspective is based on only one certainty: that Carles Puigdemont, on the one hand, and on the other, is absolutely unpredictable.
