The former president of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, and the current president, Pere Aragonès, this Saturday in Alghero.Francesca Salaris / AP
Three long years have passed since then.
In September 2018, in a control session in the Congress of Deputies, Joan Tardá, spokesperson for ERC, made it very clear what the Government had to do if it wanted their support.
"Urge the state attorney general to withdraw the accusation of rebellion to negotiate the budgets," he summoned the president.
Sánchez never did. It took a lot for the PSOE to convince ERC that it should stop conditioning the legislature to what happened in the Supreme Court. Each decision of the court or the prosecution generated enormous tensions. Every time that PSOE and ERC tried to approach and consolidate a dialogue process, a judicial decision returned everything to the starting box.
So much so that in the PSOE, Unidas Podemos and ERC the idea was installed that justice, or at least a conservative sector close to the PP, was working to weaken the Government. That conviction reached the maximum when 48 hours before the full inauguration of Pedro Sánchez, when everything was already closed between the PSOE and ERC after a complex negotiation, the Central Electoral Board, made up mainly of magistrates, decided to disqualify Quim Torra from full Christmas holidays, January 4, 2020.
There a substantive pact was forged that, with ups and downs, still survives today, when the latest "accident", as the Government calls it - this is the arrest of Carles Puigdemont on the Italian island of Sardinia - has reinstated the feeling that you could go back to the starting box. The agreement between the groups led by Pedro Sánchez and Oriol Junqueras is simple: dialogue and negotiation cannot be stopped for reasons beyond the control of the negotiators. And judicial and prosecutorial decisions are, explain sources from the Executive and ERC.
A phrase from Junqueras last Friday, a key day in which he decided to appear in various media to convey the idea that the dialogue does not stop, drew a lot of attention in the Government, because it confirmed the messages that are conveyed to them in a way. discreet from ERC.
“There are powers of the State that are working hard to try to blow up any possibility of an agreement.
I would not break any negotiating table under any circumstances.
Breaking the negotiation does not help us anything and makes everything worse ”.
This idea summarizes what ERC is saying to the Government in private: whatever happens on the judicial front, and even on the political front, with a sector of the independence movement and at the same time the opposition of the PP and Vox trying to dynamite the dialogue, Junqueras, Pere Aragonés and the ERC leadership hold up.
And the Government, in return, has transferred the idea that it will do everything in its power to facilitate dialogue, as demonstrated with the pardons to those convicted of the
procés
.
“Politics left the field and justice occupied everything.
Now it is time for politics to gain ground ”, sums up a member of the Government.
At this moment the Executive has an important decision pending: to appeal or not the decree of the Generalitat that allows guaranteeing the millionaire bonds imposed by the Court of Accounts to the main independence leaders.
This was the last of the episodes of tension that did not stop the dialogue either.
In almost all the political conversations between the Executive and ERC the judicial scene is present. In addition to Puigdemont, who is the main challenge, there are important leaders of this party who have pending cases, and the Secretary General, Marta Rovira, is still fleeing Spanish justice in Switzerland.
All these conversations always reach the same point: the Government does not even control the Supreme Court's office, so ERC must leave those decisions out of the dialogue. There have also been strong misunderstandings in the process. For example, the Government believed that it was a clear gesture that the State's legal profession went from accusing the prisoners of the procés of rebellion to sedition, a controversial decision that put Edmundo Bal, until then in charge of the case, out of the State's legal profession. and shortly after in Ciudadanos. But ERC saw it as an assault, because they wanted the lawyer to only accuse him of embezzlement.
The fundamental problem in politically managing these situations is that the Executive has no way of anticipating judicial decisions. "The problem that the Government has is that it does not control the timing of this process," admit judicial sources.
In fact, it is Puigdemont, who does not want to negotiate with the Government and with whom the Executive does not have any intermediation, who dominates the decisions about its process. It is he who has decided to travel to Italy, the source of the problem, and who can also control his own process. He could even appear at some point or try to be tried for only some crimes in Spain if there is a limited delivery from any country. These judicial sources point out that the theory that justice bursts the negotiation is not true, because for example the Supreme Court could have complicated pardons a lot if it had raised a question of constitutionality, something it did not do. It is also foreseeable that the Supreme does not overthrow this measure of grace. Even so, from the Executive and ERC they see it very differently,and they are convinced that the scenario will become even more complicated because the judicial process still has many fronts open.
In any case, there is a certain optimism in the Executive despite the difficulties.
The ministers and leaders consulted are surprised by the resistance of ERC in the face of pressure from the Junts.
And they see the toughest independence movement increasingly weakened in the face of ERC's commitment to dialogue.
The last sample was the decision to cancel the demonstration in favor of Puigdemont scheduled for today, to "concentrate efforts on next October 1".
The Executive is convinced that this effort for dialogue will be rewarded by Catalan society, and will soon be reflected in the polls.
At the moment there are already objective data on its effects: hate crimes related to ideology fell 62% in Barcelona in 2020. The Executive and ERC hold the pulse like this.
The next step will be the Budgets
