With the voting this weekend by the members of Together for Catalonia (Junts), Pedro Sánchez has now tied up sufficient votes in the Congress of Deputies to go ahead with his investiture which, although it has no date at the time of writing, is flagged by all the indicators as being set for this week. As with the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) rank and file, the Junts backing for the agreements that the party reached separately with the Socialists (PSOE) is very broad, to the point that no argument is possible. In the case of ERC, 44% voted and the percentage of affirmative votes was 89%; in Junts, 67% of the grass roots took part in the vote and 86% voted yes.
Debate, therefore, is over: the members of the two Catalan pro-independence parties have closed ranks with the position expressed by their leaders and have turned the page to enter a new political era that some see as exciting, others as full of uncertainties and a few as a legislature full of traps in which both Junts and ERC have renounced the position of advantage that their MPs granted them. Be that as it may, one thing is certain: in neither of the two parties are the critics of these positions in the lead, they are all in the same boat and heading towards the same destination.
The result of both votes, those of Junts and the one earlier held by ERC, means that the parallel noise that sometimes accompanies this type of debate now returns to reality. The same thing happened to the PSOE and Felipe González. A group of Socialist leaders assembled around the former PM who are more nostalgic than they are important. However, this noise against Pedro Sánchez has been amplified just as loudly, if not even louder, than those Socialist voices who were in favour of the agreement. There, the vote was not very different from that of ERC and Junts: 87% of PSOE members ratified the agreement. It is obvious, therefore, that González lost the game, but he continues to say the same thing and his speeches occupy the same amount of media space as before the vote took place.
Despite the silences both in the PSOE and in ERC and Junts, the three parties continue without closing the amnesty law that must be presented in Congress. At least, at 9pm this Sunday. The two incomplete areas are still the same ones that negotiators have been occupying for days: that of lawfare and that of the accusations of terrorism in the Democratic Tsunami case, introduced by judge García Castellón at the beginning of last week. In the first case, that of the lawfare cases, everything points to the likelihood that those affected will be left without protection from the new law - promises for future coverage, yes - and their legal cases will be at the discretion of the judges of the National Audience or the Supreme Court .
Regarding the accusations of terrorism in the Tsunami case, with García Castellón having opened Pandora's box, it would be stupid to accept an imprecise wording in the amnesty law that would leave room for manoeuvre by the Spanish justice system. Because when that happens, we already know how it ends.