The PSOE agreement with Junts for the investiture heralded a roller coaster and, a year and a month later, the President of the Government finds himself on the steepest climb. Pedro Sánchez begins 2025 on the back of a shifting majority that needs to be stabilized to move the budgets forward. In this endeavor, Junts is not the only one, but it is the main obstacle, since it has considered its trust broken and demands substantial progress in the fulfillment of its agreements to once again support the Executive.
Junts has been, during the start of the legislature, the formation that has posed the greatest challenge for those in charge of gathering the votes that the Government needs in Congress. Some Moncloa initiatives, such as the renewal of the anti-crisis decrees a year ago, made the Minister of the Presidency and Justice, Félix Bolaños, and the number three of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, two of the usual facilitators, sweat.
Those decrees came to light in exchange for a new commitment, in this case the transfer of immigration powers to Catalonia. Others, such as the extension of the special tax on energy companies that has just been approved, look even worse, since Junts rejects it outright without even opening up to transacting it in exchange for other things.
Scares and setbacks aside, the underlying question is whether the Government will at some point manage to crystallize the majority to carry out the budgets, a real lifeline that would allow it to overcome the halfway point of the legislature in good shape. And the key to this is the progress in all the folders that Sánchez keeps open with all his partners, from the PNV to Podemos, from Sumar to Junts, without forgetting the ERC block, EH Bildu and BNG.
Immigration
In recent weeks Junts has greatly toughened its speech. Carles Puigdemont has been in charge of expressing in first person his discontent with the Government, which he has said has “flagrantly” failed to fulfill its commitments. The independence leader disdains the winks of the socialists and reiterates that he has lost confidence in Sánchez. The interpretation in Moncloa is not that Puigdemont wants to break up, but that he wants to increase the price of his votes and already receive significant compensation.
Junts hoped to cash in on one of its big game before the end of the year: the arrival of immigration powers in Catalonia. However, the negotiation has become complicated, as explained by the general secretary Jordi Turull in this newspaper, because, in his opinion, the Executive’s proposal is more like “a management assignment than a delegation of powers.”
All in all, Junts is confident that they will achieve this competence objective, if not in the last two weeks of 2024, perhaps in the first two weeks of next year. At the moment, as this newspaper reported, both groups are also negotiating a decree that will allow for a response to the emergency situation faced mainly by the Canary Islands and Ceuta in the distribution of migrant minors.
Investments
However, it is more difficult to reverse the investment deficit. The independentists point out that, year after year, Catalonia is one of the communities that comes out worst in the execution of budgeted funds. That being the case, they maintain, it makes no sense to negotiate numbers that, when push comes to shove, are not met.
Last October, Junts already raised this economic grievance during a control session in Congress, which was replicated by the vice president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, promising to improve the execution figures. Junts cites data to show that the situation would have changed little: according to the numbers used by Puigdemont’s team, in 2023 the percentage of investment execution was 45% in Catalonia compared to 212% in Madrid.
The meeting
One of the issues that has gained weight in recent weeks is the possibility of Sánchez and Puigdemont holding a meeting that, until now, the Socialists had always avoided.
From Junts they maintain a discourse with contradictory nuances about this. The former president himself has referred several times to this hypothetical meeting as a form of redress towards him, and has even described it as “political amnesty.” But immediately afterwards, the party always points out that it is not a condition to negotiate the accounts or even to recover lost trust, which would only be restored with compliance with what was agreed.
Junts sources also detail that, just as the ABC newspaper advancedthe Government would have been open to holding a brief meeting with Puigdemont in the European Parliament, taking advantage of Sánchez’s presence at the European Council meeting in Brussels. An option that did not convince the independentists, considering that they were only offered a photograph without political content.
To the political tensions over the meeting, logistical issues could be added, such as where in Brussels to hold it. The meeting between Cerdán and Puigdemont in October 2023 that served to channel the investiture agreement with Junts took place in the European Parliament, but now the former president is no longer an MEP and does not have an office at the headquarters of the community legislature.
The meeting demanded by the former Catalan president is now on the table of the socialists. In their last appearances of the year, both Sánchez and Salvador Illa left the door open for this meeting to take place, even before the amnesty is applied to Puigdemont. A gesture that, if it ends up taking place, could definitively thaw relations between Junts and the Government.
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