2023-10-22 02:06:05
Mediator, rapporteur, facilitator, are figures that today seem necessary on the part of the pro-independence world to continue negotiating the investiture with the PSOE and who, at the same time, make it more expensive, especially due to the controversy that this issue already generated then within socialism. . Now the pressure for Pedro Sánchez to accept this format comes from several actors involved in the negotiation, essential for the president to retain Moncloa.
In 2019, the rapporteur already opened a rift between socialist barons such as Guillermo Fernández Vara, Emiliano García-Page or Javier Lambán and the socialist government itself when it was one of the claims by ERC to support its first General State Budgets. The controversy generated in the middle of the first dialogue table led to early elections in April 2019. Junts once again decisively agitates for the same figure as a key condition to unblock negotiations with the socialists. The escaped former president, Carles Puigdemont, was clear at the beginning of the month in a statement from Brussels: “There is a need to create a mediation and verification mechanism that provides guarantees of compliance and monitoring of the agreements that the two major Spanish political parties did not. They are in a position to give us. The total lack of trust between the parties makes this mechanism essential, and it has to operate from the beginning of the negotiations. Our experience prevents us from having any confidence in the word we are given; “It would be irresponsible to undertake a future negotiation that does not have this mechanism,” he warned.
The mediator is vital for the independentists and appears in the report of the committee of experts of the Clarity Agreement that the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, received this Monday. A document on the possible mechanisms to hold a referendum with which ERC intends to negotiate once Sánchez passes his inauguration.
In fact, at this point in the negotiations, the figure of the mediator stands as the main obstacle: Míriam Nogueras already warned this a little over a week ago after meeting with Pedro Sánchez when she indicated that they refused to follow the path of the last legislature, in veiled reference to Esquerra, because he considers that it has not worked since he understands that the Government failed to fulfill many of its commitments. And this week, from Junts, they have continued to convey that the figure of the mediator is an obstacle to closing the agreement with the PSOE for the investiture.
This recurring demand by the independentists in their negotiations with the socialists has always been rejected by the Spanish Government, since allowing it would imply, de facto, assuming, in the international arena that is beyond its control, the solution to the conflict between the State and Catalonia. . The Government seeks to limit the conflict to an internal matter and that is why until now it has refused to recognize it. However, now, in the final phase of the negotiation, Moncloa is already calculating the damages and successes regarding this figure. Government sources do not now close this door that was previously impenetrable, although they avoid giving specific details of the conversations with the independentists. “Everything is going according to what we had planned,” they simply point out. Two weeks ago, the first secretary of the PSC, Salvador Illa, did not want to leave this possibility on empty paper. “It’s good that there are those elements that help build trust,” he said.
The figure of the rapporteur is also questioned by more left-wing actors. The Commons, the Catalan party, acknowledged that they saw it with “good eyes.” Sumar’s interlocutor with Junts, former deputy Jaume Asens, has already verbalized on several occasions that an international interlocutor is “problematic”, but he has pushed for this figure to be national and has directly pointed out a key actor: former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero . “He is a person who has a profile that could play an interesting role in the negotiation.”
In the Executive there is an information blackout regarding the negotiation on the amnesty and they warn that, although it is not “stalled” it is not advancing “as fast” as other interlocutors claim, in reference to the independence leaders. “Let no one think that this is easy, or that it will be solved in a few weeks,” warns a Government minister, although, as this newspaper published, the option of an investiture before the swearing in of the Constitution of Princess Eleanor.
Prudence is maximum in Moncloa and in fact, only the circle closest to Sánchez knows the real details about the negotiation with Puigdemont and Junqueras. In Sumar, sources close to the vice president acknowledge that they were separated from the first moment. Pedro Sánchez himself transferred it to Yolanda Díaz. “We cannot do more, we have not come out well with our amnesty proposal,” they acknowledge. In Díaz’s party they thus admit her failure to assert her negotiating capacity and for a week now her spokespersons have refused to talk about the amnesty or to offer the proposal of their experts to end the negotiations.
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