It must be recognized that Pedro Sánchez has an innate ability to alter the situation on the political chessboard and try to propitiate - successfully or not, that is another matter - the best possible scenario for his personal interests. This Monday, when we should have been talking about the enormous blow that the Spanish Socialists (PSOE) had suffered in the municipal and autonomous elections, which is not comparable to any situation experienced since before Felipe González arrived at the government of Spain in 1982, the still-prime minister quickly moved a piece on the game board and announced the calling of a snap Spanish general election for July 23rd. This achieves several effects: it eliminates any debate about whether his own face should no longer be the one on the election poster, since it immediately dissolves the houses of parliament and puts the party into election campaign mode. It catches the area to the left of the PSOE - that is, Podemos and the new platform Sumar - without having done its homework of reaching an agreement, and thus installs the argument that only if all these parties concentrate the vote of the left in the Socialists can the arrival of the People's Party (PP) and Vox be prevented after the next Spanish elections.
He also avoids being agonizingly ground down in the Spanish Congress, where in order to advance with the laws that were in process, he would have had to make concessions, since his opponents smell his weakness. It is true that he thus renounces the luster of exercising the rotating presidency of the European Union that Spain will hold in the second semester of this year, but he also makes it clear that it is a rotating presidency that is perhaps overrated. For the PP, Sánchez's Russian roulette move is not a bad scenario - the sooner the better - but all things considered it is not ideal either. The conservatives will not be able to deploy all the municipal and autonomous regional power they conquered this Sunday and will have ahead of them a public negotiation of mayoralties and regional powers, negotiating via the news media with Vox.
Sánchez's surprise announcement, as though it were a cannon shot in a pool game, has collateral consequences and one of these is felt in the city of Barcelona. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Junts candidate, Xavier Trias, now has a greater chance of being invested as mayor when the Barcelona City Council is constituted next Saturday, June 17th, since the two options that could bar him from mayoral office are now much more difficult. The left-wing tripartite that Collboni (PSC) and Colau (BComú) advocated on election night needs ERC and it is hard to see Oriol Junqueras giving the green light to a situation like this. It is also true that the PSOE is interested in putting itself before the Spanish public with the minimum possible baggage in Catalonia and would be more interested in postponing a debate on deal in Barcelona city until September.
The PP, which would arithmetically be another option - backing Collboni and Colau - a route that some in Socialist circles have explored, will not be so willing to play ball, with its eyes on the Spanish scene, since the party's line in general will be to give no concessions to the Socialists. It remains unknown what ERC will ask for, which after its electoral defeat on Sunday could be tempted to tie itself to a majority with Trias and be able to make the point that there are two Junts - the pragmatic one and the one that decided to leave the Catalan government. But it is early days for this suggestion and everything points to the talks on the Barcelona council proceeding slowly in order to explore the different options.
A final note on the repercussions of the Spanish events of July 23rd on Catalonia. It is clear that the political format in which they will be held gives the most help to the two major Spanish parties. This has already been seen in other elections when the PSOE gambled almost everything, and the People's Party had options to reach the government palace, as it will have on this occasion. In addition, there is the matter of Vox, and nor can out rule out that Ada Colau will lead the Barcelona candidacy of Yolanda Díaz's platform. In this context, the space for ERC and Junts is getting smaller and the two parties have to decide the artillery that they will prepare to fight the election. Junts has put a candidacy with ERC and the CUP on the table, which apparently has few prospects and is very reminiscent of political operations practiced in the past. No one mentioned whether ERC and the CUP had been spoken to beforehand, or whether they found out about it through the media. We'll see in the next few hours if it leads anywhere, but, in principle, I tend to be quite skeptical. Nevertheless, the external and internal battle of the pro-independence world will not only be about people, but also about strategies and policies.