The amnesty pushes the Catalan independentists into the game of governability

The ‘yes’ to the investiture of Pedro Sanchez As president of the Spanish Government, he certified this Thursday the change in strategy of the Catalan independence party JxCat in Congress, opening itself to participate in governability in exchange, among other things, for a law of amnestybut flagging their distrust towards the socialists.

Six years have had to pass since the unilateral declaration of independence in the Catalan Parliament for Junts to agree to participate in the game of governability, a turn that is difficult to explain to its bases, accustomed to six years of flying the flag of “non-surrender” and prescribe the “intelligent confrontation” with the Spanish State.

After a long and discreet negotiation with the socialists, Junts achieved what seemed impossible shortly before the elections: that its seven deputies said “Yeah’ to the investiture of a socialist candidate, despite the fact that in the middle of the campaign the former regional president of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont, moral leader of the political space, assured that Sánchez would not be president with the votes of his party.

What has changed at Junts to move from ‘No’ to the ‘yes’ andn little more than three months? The pragmatic turn began to take shape on election night, when Puigdemont did not directly close the door to investing Sánchez, it evolved as the weeks went by and crystallized in the visits to Brussels by Yolanda Díaz (from the left-wing Sumar coalition) and Santos Cerdán (PSOE), which the former Catalan president understood as a gesture of legitimization of his figure as a valid interlocutor.

The amnesty and the recognition of the discrepancy

Although after the general elections Junts established the amnesty as a “point” To start negotiating, the truth is that this law is the main tangible return that Puigdemont’s party has obtained from the negotiation, in addition to a space for negotiation with the PSOE with international verifiers, a demand long claimed by the independence movement.

Junts emphasizes that the agreement with the PSOE includes in writing the “discrepancy” between both formations and that Sánchez must gain stability “agreement to agreement”given the distrust towards the socialists, who will have to measure their words in relation to the Catalan conflict.

Effervescence hours before the investiture

Proof of this was the anger that Sánchez’s speech aroused among the Junts deputies in the Spanish Congress, who held a meeting with the organization secretary of the PSOE to convey the “discomfort” which caused the amnesty to be associated with a “sorry”.

The party avoided even confirming whether this discomfort could worsen and affect their voting intentions, although sources from the executive consulted by EFE categorically ruled out that their deputies were going to vote for something different than the “Yeah’ at the investiture and other voices criticized this threat as “theater”.

In the PSOE they are aware that it will be a difficult legislature to manage and that relations with Junts will have to be “greasing them”as pointed out by the secretary of the socialist organization, Santos Cerdán, in statements in Congress, although I reiterate his “conviction to comply” the agreement with the independentists.

In Congress, the PSOE will have to sit down to negotiate with a sharp-edged spokesperson like Miriam Nogueras, an exponent of the most unilateralist wing of Junts.