Ever since Pedro Sánchez crossed the Rubicon last Saturday at the federal committee meeting of the Spanish Socialist party (PSOE), by announcing that he was prepared to bring a bill for an amnesty to the Congress of Deputies in order to continue for four more years in office, it has seemed that the Socialists are now in a hurry to seal the investiture deal of their candidate as soon as possible. Thus, this Monday, a meeting in Brussels between a delegation of Together for Catalonia (Junts), headed by Carles Puigdemont, and another from the PSOE, led by the party's organizational secretary, Santos Cerdán, was announced to the public. It was not the first appointment that the two parties have held, nor the one featuring the highest ranking officials on the Socialist side, nor is the Belgian capital the only city where they have met, but it was the first meeting at which the PSOE needed to disclose to the public, and especially to its membership, that it is now in the final stretch and that the investiture of Sánchez as head of a new Spanish government is a matter of days away.
There will be an investiture, clearly. At least, as long as there is no cataclysm, because in politics you always have to leave a margin, however small it may be, for the possibility of surprise. But it is not that an agreement is about to be announced, even though the PSOE has shifted to another gear in its negotiation and is trying to resolve or put to rest the obstacles still to be overcome. One side's haste is not the other's, with Junts preferring to leave things open for different readings in the future. Without digging any deeper, there is an example of something like this in relation to the amnesty: the text is not quite settled and, over these recent weeks, it has happened more than once that, when the overall agreement was close, it burst open at one of the seams. We are still here, and have to remember that this is the issue on which most progress has been made. It is clear that the subject of the international mediator, which the PSOE has already assumed as irreversible, is a guarantee, but Junts remains very clear that the agreement that facilitates the investiture must be in line with the address delivered by Carles Puigdemont on September 5th in Brussels.
In this soft landing which the Socialists have made, during which they have even changed the language used for almost six years, this Monday they also took another step. In fact, the press release distributed by the PSOE already goes in this direction: "The organizational secretary of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, met this afternoon with president Carles Puigdemont in the offices that the deputies of Junts for Catalonia/Free in Europe have at the European Parliament". The details of how things are done in politics are never accidental, he is said to be "the president" and the Socialists, with a delegation led by the party's number three figure, went to meet him at his office at the European Parliament. With this Monday having marked six years since Puigdemont arrived in Brussels at the start of his exile, and the same time period since the Spanish state began the process of dehumanizing his figure, also with the involvement of the Socialists, a return to the use of the term "president" when he is named takes things back to a situation that they should never have left.
The media release adds that "everyone agreed that the good atmosphere of the meeting stood out and noted that the aforementioned negotiations are advancing in the right direction." Having said that, the rush of the PSOE so that the investiture session does not go beyond the 6th or 7th does not seem even remotely feasible. It is hard to see that it could take place before the week of November 13th; and even this would mean speeding up greatly rather than continuing as at present. The Socialists have it easy if they want to maintain the calendar: let them, within a few hours, end the vetoes they are maintaining on Junts's proposals. Because it is clear that now Pedro Sánchez must be invested under all circumstances, since, otherwise, he would be in a very difficult electoral situation and the steps taken would end up taking their toll at the polls. There is a good climate, as the note says, for this to be avoided. But the Socialists must not forget that Puigdemont is used to living with pressure and that the classic systems for applying tension do not achieve, in this case, the results that they might for other typical politicians.