The Catalan independentists have responded with more gasoline to the PP's attempts to put out the political fire due to the controversy over the conditional pardon for Carles Puigdemont.
The popular leadership has activated an ostrich strategy, suspending interviews and meetings with questions from journalists and reducing the exposure of the leader, who only launches messages encapsulated in the Galician campaign rallies.
But Junts, and now ERC, are not making it easy for them.
This Tuesday, the general secretary of Esquerra Republicana, Marta Rovira, revealed a previously unknown conversation with the popular party to facilitate the investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, which was ultimately unsuccessful.
The head of the conservatives responded angrily from Galicia, presenting himself as a victim of “slander.”
Meanwhile, confusion is growing in the PP over the latest information about the party's contacts with the independence movement.
“The feeling we all have is that there is something else that has not yet come to light,” says a leader connected to all sectors of the PP.
The general secretary of Esquerra Republicana, Marta Rovira, this Tuesday gave the name and surname to an emissary of the popular party who was supposedly in charge of canvassing support to facilitate the investiture of the PP leader.
“In August, after the elections, deputy Carlos Floriano came and addressed Teresa Jordà and proposed that we negotiate.
"They wanted to build a majority," Rovira revealed in an interview with Cadena SER's
Here Catalunya
from Geneva (Switzerland), where he has remained since he fled Spain to avoid possible responsibilities related to the organization of the 2017 October 1 referendum. “The PP sought Esquerra to protect its investiture,” Rovira insisted.
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The PP leadership reacted to this revelation with a statement in which it flatly denied having held talks with ERC for Feijóo's investiture.
“The Popular Party has NEVER entered into conversations or negotiations with ERC within the framework of the investiture.
NEVER,” said the PP text, with capital letters to emphasize its refusal.
The PP statement, however, recognized the contact between Carlos Floriano and Teresa Jordà, both parliamentarians in Congress.
“Deputy Carlos Floriano commented to an ERC deputy informally and colloquially in the month of August that they should let the list with the most votes govern.
Without further ado,” highlighted the Génova text, which also denied that the PP leader had followed superior orders in that contact and that he had spoken with Rovira herself, who is on the run from Spanish justice.
“Of course, Carlos Floriano did not receive any assignment to propose anything.
He also did not speak with the fugitive Marta Rovira, whom we took the opportunity to ask to return to Spain to be tried by the courts of our country.
What sense would it make if contact between the PP and ERC were made through Carlos Floriano, who is spokesperson for the PP in the Foreign Affairs Commission, and Teresa Jordà, deputy spokesperson for ERC?
On the Republican side, with this message to Jordà, the PP was able to guarantee a direct path with the Republican Party leadership, both with regard to the president, Oriol Junqueras, and the general secretary, Marta Rovira, and even to the Catalan president Pere Aragonès.
Jordà is a deputy in Congress, but, until June, she was part of the Government of the Generalitat, heading the Climate Action Ministry.
She is a veteran voice within ERC and has extensive experience in decision-making.
On the PP side, Floriano is a deputy with a relevant position in the new legislature, although he has not been on the popular steering committee since 2015, when he stopped being deputy secretary of Organization.
PP sources underline his “very direct connection and his close relationship with Esteban González Pons”, Institutional Deputy Secretary of the PP and whom some information has placed as the main interlocutor of the PP with Junts per Catalunya, although he denies this.
The online
Okdiario
published that González Pons met with Puigdemont's envoy, Jordi Turull, at a businessman's house in Pedralbes last August, a meeting that Pons has denied.
Asked by EL PAÍS, Carlos Floriano yesterday refused to give further explanations and referred to the statement from the national leadership of the party.
ERC's revelation came just 24 hours after Junts had defended the legitimacy of its attempts with the PP.
“We have a free hand to agree,” Junts spokesperson Josep Rius alleged on Monday.
The former Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, threatened the PP last week with pulling the rug out from under and revealing all his private conversations with the PP.
With the fire fueling, Feijóo spoke from a rally in Galicia.
“Do not rule out that tomorrow they will say that I have offered the Ministry of the Interior to ERC and the Ministry of Defense to Otegi.
"We have one after another, one trap, one slander and another," he complained, in a veiled way of relating this matter to the information published this Saturday in 16 media outlets, including EL PAÍS, about the PP opening itself to study a conditional pardon for Puigdemont.
Information that has caused a fire in the final stretch of the Galician campaign.
The Government spokesperson, Pilar Alegría, was especially harsh with the PP from the round after the Council of Ministers this Tuesday.
“Lying is the only political project of the PP, it is the freedom to lie without charge.
The PP even spoke to the prompter, lying to all Spaniards, to their party, and to their only partner: Vox.
Lies, opacity, hypocrisy,” Alegría summarized, in a very serious tone.
While the leader tries to calm the crisis, confusion increases in the PP.
“It's bloody crazy, nobody knows what's happening,” admits a leader connected to all sectors.
This source points out that internally new revelations are being considered about how far the PP's negotiations with the Catalan independentists went.
“The feeling we all have is that there is something more.”
“But what is it?” he asks.
“A recorded conversation?
documents?
Nobody knows".
Génova has taken cover except for Feijóo's encapsulated messages at rallies, and only the barons, and especially Isabel Díaz Ayuso, submit to questions from the press.
The president of the Community of Madrid appears on the figurehead to flag the crisis, although along the way she leaves her messages.
Yesterday he clearly opposed the possibility of pardoning Carles Puigdemont under any conditions, which contrasts with what a source at the highest level of the PP had conveyed to 16 journalists, reports
JJ Mateo.
“You should never pardon someone who has committed serious crimes,” stressed Ayuso, who while the others retreat, remains on the trail.
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