None of the signals emitted Carles Puigdemont To date, they allow the government to be optimistic about the approval of the general state budgets for 2025. The votes in Congress and the statements of the Junts indicate a “no” in the final decision, but Puigdemont did not want to definitively break the bridges.
Playing, as always on the wire, The leader of Junts has agreed to sit down and discuss in Switzerland with the PSOE negotiators, led by the secretary of the Socialist Organisation, Santos Cerdan.
The PSOE representative arrived in Geneva this Friday to meet with the Secretary General of Junts, Jordi Turulland spokesperson at the Congress of Deputies, Miriam NoguerasNeither party has revealed whether the negotiations have produced the desired results, although Puigdemont suggested on social network X that his party would not support the spending cap next week.
The meetings in Geneva, in the presence of an international mediator, began in December 2023 while the amnesty law was being negotiated. However, these meetings had been interrupted last Junecoinciding with negotiations between the CPS and the ERC to agree on the investiture of Salvador Illa.
The proclamation of the socialist as president the same day that Puigdemont played in a toccata and fugue In Barcelona, this ended up boosting relations. But this week seems essential if the PSOE intends to approve the budgets and that both parties, at least, They agreed to continue negotiations.
On Thursday, the approval of the spending ceilingwhich serves as the basis for the implementation of the PGE, and Sánchez needs Puigdemont for this. “Our vote on the spending ceiling will not be decided with the aim of stabilize or wear out but based on what is on the negotiating table for this specific case,” the former Catalan president wrote in a message on X.
It does not surprise me that neither the media frenzy nor the lack of rigour that accompanies it, neither one nor the other, I have understood well. Our political vocation is not to ensure stability or to exhaust anything. Our objective is to defend Catalonia and the interests of the Catalans, and that…
— krls.eth / Carles Puigdemont (@KRLS) September 21, 2024
The pro-independence leader was responding to reports that Feijóo was open to “negotiating with Junts and the PNV to exhaust the government.” And Puigdemont responded that his intention was not to “give stability or exhaust anyone,” but rather to “defend Catalonia and the interests of the Catalans.”
That is, he strikes with one hand and softens with the other. For, he then stressed, he who “helps” them will have their support, “whether to govern, to be opposed” “Whoever does the opposite or whoever deceives us (or makes things worse) does not count. [con ellos]he qualified.
Same text, different vote
Junts has already reversed the deficit trajectory presented by the government in July and warned that it would not change its vote if the text was not modified. Today, the Council of Ministers has approved the same document again without introducing any changes, although the PSOE hopes that Puigdemont can change his mind.
Everything that Santos Cerdán negotiated with Puigdemont in Switzerland, remains for the moment the internal competence of its protagonists. Because beyond the veiled confirmations of the meeting, neither party has offered the slightest information.
The Minister of Digital Transition and Civil Service, Oscar Lopezsaid upon his arrival at the Film Festival that it will be his party “that will confirm or not the meetings that will take place and report on them.”
In the past, both sides have held these meetings discreetly and provided few details about them.
Pressure for amnesty
The latest announcement from Junts came last Tuesday with the last-minute U-turn of the pro-independence party, which voted against the law to regulate temporary rentals that the government intended to implement. This is just the latest clash of many that socialists and post-convergents have waged in recent weeks, due to the transfer of powers to Catalonia in matters of immigration or the application of the amnesty law.
Because that is where the mother of all problems lies, according to Junts sources. Puigdemont is aware that needs Sanchez to put pressure on judges and obtain the measure of grace applied.
The second escape from Barcelona last August only made things worse with Justice and the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaskaannounced that something like this “will not repeat itself”.
But beyond the fact that the pro-independence leader allows Parliament to remain in place, this does not guarantee that Sánchez will get it to approve key laws for the Executive.
So, Puigdemont once again has the future of the government in its hands. And he does so, true to his style, without slamming the door, but maintaining uncertainty until the last moment. Only in this way does he hope to obtain compensation. And this is also how he continues to forge his story of the man capable of change everything at the last minute.
ERC Reviews
Meanwhile, in the ERC, immersed in the internal battle for its renewal, Junts is criticized vote with PP and Vox to “punish” the government, as happened with the issue of rents or with the trajectory of the deficit. “It is possible that they think that the worst will be the best for Catalonia,” said the ERC deputy on Saturday. Pilar Valluguera in RNE.
Sánchez has the difficult task of convincing ERC and Junts to adhere to the same agreement, while both parties are in separate processes to renew their executives and in the middle of a direct confrontation between the two. The Swiss meeting is probably the last attempt with Puigdemont before the important vote this week.
