The government and Junts have a different interpretation of what they agreed to get the pro-independence supporters to abstain – in fact they did not vote, although the effect is the same – last week in the plenary session of Congress held in the Senate on two decisive decrees. The agreement was made at the last minute, on the verge of the voting deadline, which was set for 15:30 p.m. on Wednesday, and there was no time for details. So, on the most important and controversial issue, the transfer of immigration policy to the Generalitat, the one that made Junts go from no to abstention, only a very generic paragraph was agreed upon, the interpretation of which is now being discussed by the PSOE and Junts. The text that the negotiators (Santos Cerdán, Félix Bolaños and María Jesús Montero for the PSOE, and Jordi Turull and Míriam Nogueras for Junts) closed at the last minute to avoid a defeat of the government is the following, according to a final document to which EL PAÍS has had access: "An organic law on the delegation of powers and resources is agreed so that Catalonia can carry out a comprehensive management of immigration in accordance with article 150.2 of the Constitution."
This idea of "integral management" is what the secretary general of Junts, Jordi Turull, clings to to claim that this should include the possibility of Catalonia expelling immigrants who are repeat offenders in certain crimes, something that he has proposed as an example of the type of competences they would want for the Generalitat in the future. Turull admitted on Monday that in the negotiations, which were very quick and at the last minute before the vote, the contents of the organic law that will develop the powers that are being delegated were not agreed, but he does insist that the political agreement was clear and meant transferring "all" the powers on immigration. "All of them are all of them," he insisted.
However, the government believes that when it talks about "comprehensive management" of immigration, no one is thinking of the state relinquishing the competence of expulsion and border management. According to the president, Pedro Sánchez, who already advanced in the interview in EL PAÍS on Sunday that this was a state competence, it could not be delegated even if it wanted to, because it would be unconstitutional. Sanchez appealed on Monday in an interview on Radio Nacional to Article 149 of the Constitution, which effectively clearly states that "immigration" is on the list of exclusive competences of the central administration. However, article 150.2, which is precisely alluded to in the paragraph agreed between the PSOE and Junts, is the way by which multiple powers have been delegated that in principle belonged to the central administration, and that is what Junts is demanding.
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Sánchez clearly rules out that this, expulsions and everything related to borders, can ever be delegated, and not only because in his opinion it would not be constitutional, but also because he believes that politically it does not make sense because the line in which the European Union is going is the opposite: the management of borders and expulsions will increasingly be a European competence. shared between all the Member States, and least of all the countries, and therefore much less of the regions, which do not have it in any European country.
The president explained on RNE, in line with the interview in EL PAÍS, that the competences that the PSOE is thinking about when it agrees with Junts this delegation are issues such as "the initial authorization of employment, integration policies, which have to do with education, housing". "You can't transfer the expulsion policy, that's clear in Article 149 of the Constitution. Everything that has to do with border control, irregular migration policy, is the responsibility of the General State Administration. A pro-independence party is asking for the maximum, but Article 149 is quite clear. In addition, in the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia these powers are defined," insists the president.
The Statute of Catalonia dedicates an article, 138, to regulating the powers of the Generalitat in immigration. This precept establishes that the Catalan Administration has the "exclusive competence" in matters of first reception, the development of integration policies for immigrants or the establishment by law of a reference framework for the reception and integration of these people. It also attributes to the Generalitat the "executive competence" for the work authorization of foreigners whose employment relationship is developed in Catalonia, as well as participation in the State's decisions on immigration "with special importance for Catalonia and, in particular, the prior mandatory participation in the determination of the quota of foreign workers".
This was one of the precepts appealed by the PP before the Constitutional Court, alleging that it violated article 149.1.2 of the Constitution, according to which the State has exclusive competence in immigration. The 2010 ruling, however, upheld the constitutionality of the entire article, although it placed limits on its interpretation. "It is clear that immigration is a matter that has been reserved exclusively to the State [...], so that article 138.1 would be clearly unconstitutional if, as seems to be deduced from its wording, it sought to attribute to the Autonomous Community competences in this matter". For the magistrates, the reference to "immigration" at the head of this precept does not correspond to this constitutional matter, "exclusive competence of the State, but to other matters over which the Autonomous Community can assume competence". In other words, the Constitutional Court considered that the powers attributed to the Generalitat were, essentially, of a "welfare and social" nature and that they did not translate into the attribution to the Generalitat "of any competence in matters of immigration".
The judgment adopted an argument used by the State Attorney's Office in response to the appeal: that the evolution of the immigration phenomenon in Spain "prevents configuring" the exclusive state competence in this matter contained in article 149.1.2 of the Constitution "as a horizontal title of unlimited scope that enervates the competence titles of the Autonomous Communities of a sectoral nature with an evident impact on the migratory population, in relation to which the provision of certain social services and the corresponding public policies (education, social assistance, health, housing, culture, etc.) have acquired special importance". And, according to the Constitutional Court, it is in this context of "the social and economic integration" of the immigrant population that the powers granted to the Generalitat by the Statute of Catalonia fit in.
"Xenophobic"
Sánchez is also trying to defend himself these days from those who accuse him of agreeing on immigration policy with a party like Junts, which is associating these issues with crime and is competing in this line with ultra anti-immigration groups such as Aliança Catalana, who won the elections in Ripoll (Girona). "In Spain, the one who has incorporated a xenophobic party is the PP with Vox. Junts says they are not xenophobic. But in any case, we as a government have a humanist immigration policy," Sánchez said. It seems evident the discomfort generated in the coalition government, in the PSOE, but especially in Sumar, by the pact with Junts on immigration, given the positions of this group on such a sensitive issue in which it has a vision far removed from the progressive one.
However, Sanchez once again appeals to necessity and pragmatism to understand that it is worth giving in, and then adjusting to approve decrees such as those of last week, which included a revaluation of pensions and extensive aid packages. "I follow Aristotle's maxim that the only truth is reality," said the president, claiming pragmatism in the face of the fact that the reality is that Parliament is fragmented and needs the votes of eight groups, including Junts, to move forward with its measures. One of the politicians who used this idea the most was Argentina's Juan Domingo Perón, who made "the only truth is reality" one of his best-known slogans. Sánchez now relies on that idea, which he began to use in the interview in EL PAÍS, to explain to the progressive world that all these concessions, which the opposition sees as a "humiliation", are worth it to move forward with the progressive coalition's program. "Many are looking at [the agreements with Junts], but the moon is that we have revalued pensions, and that is the important thing."
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