The visit by a group of Podemos representatives headed by the party's secretary general Pablo Iglesias to Lledoners prison to meet with Oriol Junqueras and try to convince the Republican Left (ERC) to support the Spanish government's budget is, above all, a great defeat for the Spanish state, which has imposed repression and violence ahead of negotiation and dialogue. What Junqueras repeated to Iglesias was something already known: that his party will not sit down at a negotiating table if there are no changes in the situation of the political prisoners.
It is obvious that the state has failed when the PSOE government's major partner has had to visit a prison to try to get approval for the state's annual budget. The efforts of Pedro Sánchez to stay aloof from Iglesias' visit are in vain. From the outset, it has been known that without the visit to Lledoners, and also to Waterloo to approach president Carles Puigdemont, the Spanish government can do nothing. The state budget is literally doomed to failure.
Iglesias has the least interest of anyone in that occurring, as this is his big strategic move. Sánchez, as always, is double-dealing. He would prefer the budget to be approved, but if it isn't, he will blame its failure on the pro-independence parties, the anti-patriots in the PP and Cs, and even on Podemos. Although, for that, more time will need to go by.
Oriol Junqueras has managed to place himself at the centre of the Spanish political debate. ERC will do as he says and the party's deputies in Madrid are thus mere soldiers in the service of the Republican leader's strategy. In this regard, his party functions likes a Swiss watch. Junqueras has a strategy and is developing it step by step. Nobody at ERC fails to do what is expected of them, nor do they go off-message. Discipline as a value at a time when Catalan politics seem to be directionless on many occasions. The PDeCAT still has a lot to learn.