The general policy debate in the Catalan Parliament as it is conceived, with the presentation of the government's programme, likely went up in smoke on Saturday, when the first police incidents occurred as a rally organised by police union Jusapol coincided on Barcelona' Via Laietana with an anti-fascist protest, and it was necessary to find a different epilogue after the events of Monday evening in front of the Catalan Parliament. It's necessary to keep this in mind to understand what happened this Tuesday in the Parliament hemicycle when president Quim Torra introduced a change of gears in his speech and openly set out an ultimatum for prime minister Pedro Sánchez. If there's no specific proposal in response to his request to agree upon a referendum in Catalonia within a month, the Catalan independence movement will stop propping up the Socialist government and there'll be no other path than to hold elections in Spain.
It's clear that Torra was trying to improve his government's position, weakened in recent days. And, also, set a different focus for the Catalan political debate. To put it simply, for the police debate to be moved out of focus. The play was interesting, but needed passivity of a Rajoy and his exasperating laissez faire. Pedro Sánchez isn't like that and if the team of fixers led by the all-powerful Iván Redondo, the guru who decides everything, knows one thing it's how to keep moving, to give its opponent no respite. As soon as Torra gave his ultimatum, the Moncloa Spanish government palace called an urgent appearance of spokesperson and minister Isabel Celaá to turn the screws on the Catalan president: there's no need to wait a month, he's already got his answer, it's no.
The Moncloa's move can only mean one of two things: Sánchez has already accepted that the only path available to him is that of early elections since party luminaries are seriously worried about next year's local and autonomous community elections or he wants to test whether Quim Torra is bluffing and make him surrender something. Maybe he even thinks that the governing majority in Catalonia has significant cracks and there's a lack of consensus in the ultimatum thrown down. The fact that the Spanish government's response has come so quickly is going to force Torra to show another card during this Wednesday's debate in the Catalan chamber. The path of an agreed-upon referendum has run out of road.
But that's not the only problem. The annoyance of a sector of the independence movement expressed in the streets on Monday is real. And the need to agree on a shared political (not managerial) route map is now a necessity. Otherwise, Catalan politics runs the risk of driving itself into a tunnel which is growing ever longer, with the light at the end ever further away.