The fact that Spain's PSOE has no strategy on Catalonia is, at this late stage, pretty obvious. There's nothing in the party's electoral programme, not even a proposal for the solution of the Spanish state's most important territorial conflict. Pedro Sánchez basically trusts in two things: firstly, that he will succeed in sending everyone to sleep and then that Catalan electors will go out to vote thinking solely about how to defeat the right and prevent a hypothetical government backed by Vox. He's given this a lot of attention in the last few weeks, naturally using a message which a broad section of society will be receptive to, especially in Catalonia.
This part of the electoral strategy has surely been completed and for that reason, with enough time still ahead, he has now opened up on what is his most important political flank: whether with a new mandate he is willing to be tough on independence or not. His interview in El Periódico leaves little in doubt. Any departure from legality by the Catalan government will be answered with a new imposition of article 155 and neither will there be any new attempt at dialogue such as the one represented by the Pedralbes declaration, from which the Spanish government now seems to be distancing itself with a very eloquent phrase: I don't like to trip over the same stone twice.
The Iceta route*, although absurd, since it implies that the independence movement would need 65% of the votes to start a dialogue, isn't part of any planned scenario either, given that democracy does not, as Sánchez put it, mean tossing a coin to see what the outcome is, because problems like Brexit could arise. A curious way to rule out a referendum. A path that, certainly, would damage democracy.
We must be grateful to Sánchez that he is speaking clearly about Catalonia. As his minister Ábalos did too, declaring that the PSOE preferred a pact with Ciudadanos to one with the independence parties. We have yet to know what the independence movement wants, if it is able to clarify itself. But the most important thing is, as always in any electoral process: what Catalan voters want, those to whom Sánchez is appealing to. In the hands of whom will their votes end up, in a situation in which their ballot box support will end up being employed for one purpose or another.
*The leader of the Catalan Socialists (PSC) Miquel Iceta told Basque newspaper Berria this week that "if 65% of Catalan wanted independence, democracy would have to find a mechanism for it." (link in Catalan)