Catalan president Pere Aragonés began a round of meetings last week with the pro-independence parties and organizations aiming to explore whether the conditions are present to reconcile the serious discord among them all. The sessions could not have got off to a worse start, because the first guests at the Palau de la Generalitat were the CUP, which, immersed in the whole conflict of the case of its deputy Pau Juvillà, cancelled the invitation; following them were to have come ERC and Junts, who got in the queue and will finally meet this Monday, and in the end the contacts began with the pro-independence ONGs, Òmnium Cultural - which is in process of a thorough renovation of its leadership - and the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), which will also be changing its key figures before too long.
All this at a critical moment for the independence movement, unable to chart a shared strategy without any political direction other than constantly throwing plates at one another. When something goes wrong over and over again, it makes little sense to try and tell the public the opposite, as all it will do is irritate the voters more and more. Perhaps the smartest thing would be to change the script and rather than patch up the unity and rearm the movement, the work should focus on things that are apparently simpler, but in practice hugely important.
For example, unity, to do what? The week that has been experienced in the Catalan Parliament has brought matters down to earth, albeit with a thump. There is no real will for disobedience either in the government or the legislative chamber. We have seen how, in practice, the Catalan government has complied with the ruling for 25% Castilian language in Catalan classrooms and this has also been verified with the withdrawal of Pau Juvillà's parliamentary seat in line with the order by the Central Electoral Commission. In both cases, one thing was said and another was done, which has served to certify that, for the time being, institutional disobedience is a long way away from being part of the independence roadmap. If there was any doubt, just remember that even Vox ended up satisfied and withdrew the complaint it had initiated against members of the Bureau of Parliament because it accepted that they had carried out the order of the JEC.
For a long time I've been arguing the virtually nonexistent possibility of finding a path that is shared, ambitious and goes faster than snail's pace until Carles Puigdemont and Oriol Junqueras spend a weekend together and say everything that they have thought and not said since October 2017. Pere Aragonès and Jordi Sànchez have already done their part, which was to form a coalition government that would try to hover above the waters of the confrontation between the two parties. Maybe it's too late for this talk, and all we can do is wait for a new map of alliances for Catalonia to shape itself. Because without specific objectives to lead the way out of the independence movement's endless loop, it is difficult to maintain a unity that too often seems to lead nowhere.