Barely 48 hours after the fugitive Carles Puigdemont once again assured that Junts would veto Sánchez’s general state budgets, the PSOE’s organizing secretary arrived in Switzerland to, on the orders of the president of the government, implore the former president of the Generalitat that the legislature not overthrow him. Aware that not having the budget law approved is, in practice, a demonstration that the government in power does not have the confidence of the majority of Congress, Sánchez is trying to redirect the damaged bridges with Puigdemont and avoid a failure of this magnitude. This even less coincides with the PSOE federal congress that the tenant of Moncloa has planned to consolidate himself at the head of the party.
The meeting abroad with Puigdemont had been considered certain for weeks. It has long been no secret – PSOE sources have openly acknowledged it – that Sánchez had ordered his plumbers to close a meeting with Puigdemont. The president of the Generalitat, the socialist Salvador Illa, is also looking for him. All that remained was to know the day, time and place, and this Friday it was known when this meeting desired by Pedro Sánchez would take place.
The meeting took place in Switzerland. A delegation from the PSOE and another from Junts participated, led respectively by Santos Cerdán and Carles Puigdemont. On the socialist side, two acquaintances were present, alongside Cerdán plumbers of Sanchism who had already participated in similar struggles: the Andalusians Juan Francisco Serrano and Eladio Garzón. Serrano is also a deputy in Congress.
The mission with which Cerdán and his companions landed in Switzerland is clear: please, Puigdemont recovers the lost relations between the socialists and the elders. president has escaped. Sánchez depends on the votes of the seven Junts deputies in Congress to have a sufficient majority to guarantee governability. The successive parliamentary initiatives that the social-communist government coalition has seen fail in Parliament due to the vote against Junts are already abundant. Among them, the decision of Puigdemont’s party to reverse the approval of the spending ceiling and the deficit trajectory was heard, an essential preliminary step to present to Congress a law of the General State Budget. And Puigdemont publicly reaffirmed, a few days ago, that he would maintain this vote against. It remains to be seen whether this Friday’s meeting has changed his mind.
Relations between Sánchez and Puigdemont have broken down due to what the fugitive leader of the Junts considers to be intolerable failings on the part of the PSOE. On the one hand, having failed to pass an amnesty law that, in its application, would allow him to be completely exonerated from any criminal charges by the process –the Supreme Court does not accept the amnesty for prevarication–; on the other hand, that the PSOE has allied itself with the ERC to take the head of the new government of the Generalitat presided over by the socialist Salvador Illa.
