A delegation from the Socialist Party led by its organizing secretary, Santos Cerdán, landed this Friday in Switzerland with the same mission as about a year ago: to negotiate with Carles Puigdemont the support for the government of his seven deputies in Congress. These conversations then crystallized in the amnesty law and the investiture of Pedro Sánchez. But since the summer, this parliamentary collaboration of the Catalan independentists has been truncated. According to sources close to the organization of this meeting consulted by elDiario.es, it was planned that a first meeting would take place on Friday afternoon and that contacts would resume on Saturday.
Since the resumption of the parliamentary course, political events such as the investiture of Salvador Illa, or judicial ones, such as the decision of the Supreme Court to exclude the former president from the amnesty, have pushed Puigdemont’s supporters to act in opposition to the executive and to unite their voices with those of the PP and Vox to reverse the transcendental measures of the Government. And the meeting for which the socialist delegation went to Switzerland this Friday, both parties agree, could be decisive in assessing to what extent this situation can be reduced.
In the hours before the meeting between Santos Cerdán and Carles Puigdemont, the expectations raised in Ferraz and Moncloa were not too optimistic. The political atmosphere that was felt during the week in Congress did not invite anything else either. After announcing its abstention on a proposal on housing, Junts changed the direction of its vote at the last minute and united its seven deputies with those of the PP and Vox to reverse the parliamentary treatment of this proposal and inflict a new punishment on the government. A move that was followed by explicit threats from Carles Puigdemont himself on his social networks about his willingness to vote again against Pedro Sánchez’s legislative measures if there were no changes in the political relations between the two parties.
The new meeting in Switzerland therefore takes place amid the hangovers of this last parliamentary trip to the Government but also on the eve of another key vote: that of the path to stability which will take place next Thursday. Already overthrown by Junts, PP and Vox at the end of July, the Council of Ministers approved it again on September 10 for a second attempt. According to data from the Ministry of Finance, a budget margin for the autonomous communities and municipalities of up to 11.5 billion euros over the next two years depends on whether or not these new stability objectives are achieved.
Support for budgets
Beyond these figures, transcendental for the accounting of regional and local governments, the pressure for a new path contains an important political message. Advancing it would mean a breath of fresh air for Pedro Sánchez’s executive regarding the negotiation of the 2025 general state budgets that Moncloa wants to promote before the end of the year and for which, as for almost everything, the support of the seven deputies of Junts .
In the PSOE, however, they prefer to proceed step by step. Aware of the difficulties that come with depending on Carles Puigdemont to have or not the majority in the Congress of Deputies, the socialists assumed this week that, first of all, the meeting with the former president would turn into a crossfire of reproaches that the leader of Junts has already begun to broadcast in public in recent days.
“Losing the respect of those who have the votes you need and not working hard to convince them in every vote is the most direct path to failure. I repeat: these are the rules of the game that we have established from day one, so we should not appear surprised. Isn’t a decree, a law, an appointment negotiable? Therefore, our vote cannot be taken for granted. Not ours,” Puigdemont posted on his networks after his group voted against the housing bill.
From Junts, they insist that the warning they gave Pedro Sánchez at the beginning of the legislature, to “sweat your shirt” in every vote, remains valid for them. “We negotiate piece by piece. If you comply, you comply. And if not, there will be no vote. Let them understand, they do not have a majority. We in exchange for nothing, nothing. And in exchange for everything, a lot”, warn the members of the parliamentary group of Catalan independentists.
What Junts is trying to distance itself from is the government’s thesis that, in reality, what has pushed Puigdemont to change his relations with the PSOE is not a lack of respect for the executive but rather a double frustration. That the Supreme Court is preventing him for the moment from benefiting from an amnesty law that he and his team helped to draft and, above all, that of being excluded from the governance of Catalonia due to the pact between the PSC and the ERC.
“Everything has changed since Salvador Illa’s inauguration,” they point out from Pedro Sánchez’s team, where they are also awaiting the results of this Friday’s meeting between Cerdán and Puigdemont. “We hope they reconsider. They have to digest that Illa is president and realize that it is not sustainable to always be on the side of the PP and Vox.”
Criticism of the former president
Although the mission of the socialist delegation sent to Switzerland is to calm tempers and try to reorient a political situation that is practically leading Parliament to a blockade, Pedro Sánchez’s reproaches to the former Catalan president are not lacking either. They affirm to the PSOE that they have achieved “point by point” everything they promised Puigdemont and that for this they have assumed “a political cost that almost no one would have dared to assume”.
This is why the message they are transmitting to their interlocutors in Switzerland is that the deepening of self-government in Catalonia and the validity of the amnesty law are only guaranteed with a progressive government. And that any hypothesis of opening the door to the right would therefore be harmful for all Catalans and for Puigdemont himself.
In an attempt to protect the stability of the Executive from the whims of Puigdemont and a possible failure of the attempt to rebuild bridges with the Junts, Pedro Sánchez affirms in public and private that the legislature lasts a long time and that, even without budgets, there is a guaranteed government “for a certain time”. He told his parliamentarians this week at the Socialist Group meeting and he also told the Lehendakari, Imanol Pradales, at their meeting this Friday in Moncloa. “The impression is that President Sánchez wants to continue in the long term,” Pradales said at a press conference after his meeting with the president.
The leader of the Basque Executive also assured that Sánchez could count on the collaboration of his party to “play in favor of the stability of the State” because, in his opinion, “it is good to be able to continue moving forward on issues that affect the improvement of the self-government of the Basques. And that is why he even showed his willingness to lend a hand to the dialogue with Junts. “The relationship between the Spanish Government and Junts will have its own channels, but we have always tried to guarantee the maintenance of political stability in the State,” he assured.
The presidential team considers it a real option that the bridges with Puigdemont are currently impossible to rebuild. And yet, they reaffirm that Pedro Sánchez’s horizon is none other than to continue. Until Junts agree to collaborate, or until a legislature remains in blockade mode.
