The Extremadura Assembly has this Thursday passed a bill making explicit the support of the Extremaduran people for the Spanish government to apply article 155 of the Constitution again and suspend Catalan autonomy, for as long as necessary, taking control of public broadcaster TV3 and recovering the powers. In other words, for it to carry out another coup d'état against Catalonia. PP's motion was supported by Ciudadanos and also PSOE. Of the 65 deputies in the Parliament, 30 are from PSOE who also hold the presidency, 27 are from PP and a couple from Ciudadanos. The motion was opposed by Podemos' six members.
The motion from the Extremadura Assembly, the first to happen at this level in Spain, demonstrates various things: PP and Ciudadanos don't plan for a minute to stop fighting over the "¡A por ellos!" mantle ("go get them"). Today, Extremadura; tomorrow, anywhere in Spain. Secondly, many important figures in PSOE think exactly the same, and the president of the autonomous community, Guillermo Fernández Vara, is one of them. Likewise the PSOE presidents of Aragon, Javier Lambán, and Castile-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page.
Thirdly. The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, lacks authority over a PSOE where everyone does their own thing or rather he lets them do so to the irritation of senior party colleagues. In any case, real dialogue between the independence movement and the Moncloa government palace comes up against this monolithic, unchanging reality. It can never set sail in conditions to start a crossing. At most, a simple pleasure cruise. We're seeing dialogue between governments without any kind of real progress. That they should want to adopt a laissez faire, laissez passer attitude as their strategy would be another matter.
Fourthly and finally. The events in Girona have been very serious in terms of an attack on freedoms, unbefitting of a democratic state. The resounding silence from the Spanish government's delegation to Catalonia and the unacceptable explanations from the interior ministry for the police's actions are like the other side of the coin which the Extremaduran PSOE crudely subscribes to. It's clear that after Andalusia, PSOE has started to panic, but that can't fall on the government if it doesn't want to be buried by the incomprehension and despondency of its members.