The Government still does not break completely with La Moncloa, but it no longer rules out reaching an absolute divorce
ERC’s relationship with the Government is very affected, mortally wounded, but there is still time to avoid a total divorce. In Esquerra and in the Govern they redouble the pressure as a result of the outbreak of the espionage case against the independentistas and emphasize that the ball is in Pedro Sánchez’s court.
The President of the Government has made gestures and has moved, although insufficiently for the secessionists. The investigation announced by the Ombudsman and the constitution of the official secrets commission, with all the groups represented, is ‘pecata minutai’ for the Catalan side, which demands an investigation commission and that Sánchez dismiss the Minister of Defense, Margarita Oak trees. An unfeasible claim in the short term with the Andalusian elections and the NATO summit just around the corner.
«The Government thought that, with the meeting of Bolaños and Vilagrà in the Palau de la Generalitat (a week ago), it would be able to redirect the situation, but it has already seen that it is not», they affirm in the Catalan Government, who understand that Moncloa has got the message that it has to move in depth.
With his ‘no’ to the anti-crisis decree, Esquerra wanted to visualize that this time he is serious. And that if he threatens to overthrow all the decrees and laws promoted by the Sánchez Executive, he is not bluffing. “The Government can save a vote, but if it does not change, it will not be able to extend the legislature,” the ERC Deputy Secretary General, Marta Vilalta, warned yesterday at a party act.
No common strategy
As a political consequence, on the sovereign side, the ‘Catalangate’ has united the independentists and has increased the distance between the central and Catalan governments. When the independence movement was more divided, without a common strategy and each one voting on their own in Madrid, the three secessionist forces have found in the case of espionage a mortar to re-unite. In the vote in Congress there were no fissures – “only Bildu failed us,” says an independentist source – and the lawyers of the three formations go together in the judicial offensive.
However, ERC insists on defending the flag of dialogue and does not stop reaching out to the socialists to try to resolve the Catalan conflict. His strategy is based on negotiation and dialogue and trying to prevent the right-wing from coming to power.
In the Government and in ERC they do not want to rush. They give Pedro Sánchez one last chance so that in the meeting or in the call that he has pending with Pere Aragonès he offers convincing explanations. After the conversation, the Republicans will make a decision. They no longer rule out a complete rupture, even admitting that it goes against his strategic line and that it means agreeing with Carles Puigdemont when he proclaims that there is nothing to talk about with the government. Faced with the rupture, “they (the socialists) have more to lose than us,” they affirm in the Government.
blow up bridges
Junts and the CUP put pressure on Aragonès to blow up all the bridges, although they are suspicious of the Republicans. Some of those bridges still stand. They also pressure the president of the Generalitat to consider the dialogue table dead. In the Government they have found the right opportunity to justify that this forum has failed because of a Government capable of spying on politicians, lawyers and journalists. And that the explanations he offers are “insulting.”
To date, the Republicans’ threat to Sánchez was that without a table there would be no legislature. Now, they consider it written off and the slogan has mutated to ‘without the head of Robles there is no legislature’. The reason given by the independentists is that the bases are pressing hard and that in a case like espionage they would not understand a false closure.
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