Pedro Sánchez now has free rein from the organization of the Spanish Socialists (PSOE) to negotiate with Carles Puigdemont. The endorsement by all the provincial secretaries of the PSOE as well as the PSC (Catalan Socialists) this Sunday, without any conditions, to the acting Spanish prime minister to move ahead and form a new progressive executive signifies a de facto green light from the apparatus - and also a defeat for Emiliano García-Page, the rebel baron, because the five provincial secretaries of his Castilla-La Mancha community were all there. And this occured hours before the start of the week in which Felipe VI will open the second round of contacts, after the first candidate to whom he entrusted the investiture, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, failed last week.
On Tuesday afternoon, if the forecasts hold up and Pedro Sánchez does not ask for more time from the monarch, Felipe VI should task him with submitting to the investiture of the Congress of Deputies, at which moment the countdown for the candidacy of the Socialist leader would officially begin. The photo of the provincial secretaries aims to give an image of Socialist unity and also accompany Sánchez after the criticisms from Felipe González, Alfonso Guerra and so many others. Former PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, strong supporter of the current Moncloa palace tenant, and called on to play a role in dialogue with the pro-independence parties, at least with Junts, also adds his signature.
Thus begins a week in which we should be able to identify symptoms, or something more, of the discreet conversations which have been held so far, conversations of very high priority in regard to the two preconditions for the negotiation of the investiture underlined by Carles Puigdemont in his September 5th conference in Brussels: the proposal for the amnesty law and the international verifier for the agreements that will be progressively reached. Because if one thing has become abundantly clear in the talks that have taken place, it is that there will be no blank cheques, even if the sword of Damocles of an electoral repetition is permanently on the table.
If Pedro Sánchez received the express support of his own, the independence movement took advantage of the sixth anniversary of the October 1st referendum to claim its legitimacy and significance. The words of president Puigdemont at the event held in Plaça Catalunya, railing against those who are willing to sell out the cardinal points of the 1-O referendum in order to seek what he defined as personal ways out, do nothing but reflect the tension between the two pro-independence strategies and the differences between Together for Catalonia (Junts) and the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), as is made visible every day even if last week they were able to agree on two resolutions in the Parliament of Catalonia.
The clearest example of the divergent paths of ERC and Junts in their talks with the PSOE is that not only are they not interacting in a coordinated manner, but that one does not know what the other is doing, and that the information that is exchanged, moreover, is far from approaching the truth.