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The decision of the four Catalan pro-independence parties represented in Congress - ERC, Junts, PDeCat and the CUP - to present the Spanish parliament with proposed legislation for an Amnesty and Resolution of the Political Conflict between Catalonia and Spain, is a wise move even if its fate is well known and it will be rejected. There are defeats that serve to denounce the political hardening which is taking place and this will be a case in point. Nobody likes to lose a vote, let alone on an issue like the amnesty of political prisoners and exiles, on which there is a broad political and social consensus in Catalonia. But the opposition in the Congress by the parties of Spain's regime of 1978 - the different groups on the right and the PSOE - emphasizes that the Spanish executive has no will to relax the current repression.

The regime of 1978 is plugged into life support machinery, but the manoeuvres of the deep state make any minimal progress on the resolution of the Catalan conflict unviable except for that based on individual solutions, which also rules out a general result. Hence the difficulty, and the interest from unionism in dividing the independence movement and presenting it as a quagmire of ongoing battles and arguments. I have always defended, and the amnesty law is an obvious example, that in Madrid we must all join together on important issues. Not because they'll do what you ask - no, they don't care about you - but because they'll look at you with respect. The pro-independence unity in Congress with this bill is not the sum of four Catalan parties, it is the absolute majority of the Parliament of Catalonia. And this is the force they fear most in Madrid and that is why there are always vectors - it was already happening in the era of Jordi Pujol's hegemony - that work for its division.

The Basque Nationalist Party, Bildu and Compromís have already given their support to the bill. Podemos and the Comuns have not announced an affirmative vote, but they rule out opposing it. They should be in the "yes" camp without finding excuses in the small print or the tactical interests of the moment. There is a critical mass for an amnesty that is not, politically speaking, a majority - but is significant. It is also good to see that in this matter the PSOE has no problem voting together with the PP, Vox and Ciudadanos. Just as they also do with the rejection of the creation of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the irregularities of Juan Carlos I, the king emeritus who fled to the United Arab Emirates and of whom we only hear with regard to the tax regularizations he makes to settle some of his debts with the Treasury or in conection to the action of foreign justice systems.

A few months ago, a senior diplomat from an EU country visited Barcelona with the idea of investigating how the disagreement between the Spanish and Catalan governments could have become so deep. After four days in Barcelona and of a Catalan immersion, his analysis was impressively lucid. "I don't understand how Madrid doesn't realize," he told me. "Catalonia will not return to its previous situation as an autonomous community." "But Spain is not going to move either and you will have to decide, in this order, what you want to do and if you want to do something, when you want to do it and how you want to do it."