A satisfactory address and the appropriate discourse. For me, these two assessments define the speech given by Catalan president Pere Aragonès to the General Committee for the Autonomous Communities at the Spanish Senate. Maybe he shouldn't have gone there in order not to swell the tumult that the People's Party (PP) has assembled in the upper house against the amnesty, in the same way as Basque Nationalist leader Iñigo Urkullu and the three Socialist (PSOE) presidents of Castilla-La Mancha, Asturias and Navarre absented themselves. Or in order not to break a tradition of autonomous presidents who had not attended the institution since 2010 when José Montilla did, following the line of his predecessors Jordi Pujol and Pasqual Maragall. But for 13 years, neither Artur Mas, nor Carles Puigdemont, nor Quim Torra had entered the building in the Plaza de la Marina Española.
As a consequence, Aragonès had all the reasons he needed to reject the invitation to a forum that was not going to listen to him and that he had announced he would leave after his ten-minute speech. But, on the other hand, he went there and gave a good address, with a broad Catalanist and sovereignist vision which, although each individual can add their nuances, consisted of views shared widely among a very extensive pro-independence base. He was not listened to because the presidents of the PP autonomous communities had set up this session to try and weaken the political position of Pedro Sánchez in relation to the amnesty and to be able to offer an image showing that the Spain of the autonomies is against his negotiations with the pro-independence Carles Puigdemont and Oriol Junqueras. President Aragonès took on the challenge to assert his place on the playing field of political relevance that is becoming increasingly difficult and on which he has most competition.
The twelve blue party presidents from Spain's seagull-logo party paraded through one after the other in a competition that lasted all day. Epitomised by Isabel Díaz Ayuso from Madrid and Marga Prohens from the Balearics. The first of these, in an alarmist tone not far from the discourse of Vox, gave us the quote of the day: "If the indignity of the amnesty succeeds, soon there will be no Spaniards, because how long does a nation last when it allows itself to be betrayed?" And she treated the amnesty as a felonía, a term that, according to the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, means disloyalty and betrayal, words that we will hear repeatedly in the coming months every time there is talk of allowing the erasure of Catalan independentist convictions and ongoing criminal procedures that are linked to the independence process. Prohens - who governs the Balearic Islands with Vox and has an agreement with the far right party in tatters over the issue of Catalan, since Vox wants to eliminate all language protection measures - proposed a relationship "without being lectured or inhibited" with regard to Catalonia, demonstrating either an ignorance of reality or that she is a very inhibited leader.
And little else was revealed in the Senate session, which, it must be added, has been part of the PP's plans since July 23rd as a way of impeding the investiture of Sánchez, which is progressing at a slower pace and in which we are already beginning to glimpse nerves among the PSOE and some cryptic messages to try to speed up the negotiation. No different from the negotiation that took place in August for the composition of the Bureau in Congress and that led to the election of Francina Armengol with the vote of Junts per Catalunya, but which for several weeks the Socialists stalled before then having to hurry. In the present case, infinitely more complex and with such different positions, it is also normal that there are times when it seems that the Socialists' shirts don't fit them. But they are very far away from wanting to go to an election on January 14th with the mood of the electorate having shifted a little more to the right, something that, as they sense, is happening.