As almost every year, the celebration of the Diada, Catalonia's National Day, on September 11th, usually has a response from the Spanish state the following day, and this year has been no exception. The so-called bunker reacts as it has always done: with repression, threats, warnings and contempt for Catalan identity. September 12th serves to take the temperature of the most reactionary sectors against independence. And by the looks of it, this year they are anything but happy. Thus, the day after this Diada has had news breaking on several fronts: parliamentary lawyers stopping the Catalan language from being adopted rapidly in Congress, Spanish public prosecutors demanding that judge Pablo Llarena issue a new international arrest warrant for Catalan minister Lluís Puig and the call by the anti-independence group Societat Civil Catalana for a demonstration in Barcelona on October 8th against the proposals for an amnesty law and self-determination.
Taking them one by one, I don't know which of the powers of the lawyers of the Spanish lower house allows them to decide the time necessary to apply a decision made by the Bureau and the parliamentary plenary, which envisages that in addition to Spanish, the languages of Catalan, Basque and Galician will be used. This is a public commitment made by the speaker of Congress, Francina Armengol, after the Catalan independence movement voted her into the office and what the institution's functionaries have to do is to decide the technical mechanisms so that it can be put into action. Not are there any problems of financial means, as there is an allocation set aside for it, and I can't think of any public event planned more than a month in advance that was unable to go ahead because there were no interpreters.
I mean, to give an example: if an international summit were to be held tomorrow in Madrid and it had been organized with the same advance notice as this, does anyone imagine that it would not take place because translators could not be found? Obviously not, the public commitment was made on August 17th and Feijóo's investiture session will be on the 26th and 27th of this month of September. In other words, it would be best for them to stop talking nonsense, do their work as congressional lawyers and not look for excuses for something that is very likely to make them uncomfortable. But it is not in their hands to put obstacles in the way of political agreements that will be allowed by changes to the regulations once the necessary adjustments are made.
In the second place, the request by the Supreme Court prosecutors - signed by José Zaragoza, Consuelo Madrigal, Jaime Moreno and Fidel Cadena, the four who took part in the prosecution of the pro-independence leaders - asking judge Pablo Llarena to issue a new international arrest warrant and extradition order for the Catalan culture minister Lluís Puig, exiled in Brussels. Some people may innocently wonder what has happened since last January, when Llarena set out a new accusation due to the reform of the Spanish Penal Code and the abolition of the crime of sedition, and later, in June, the Supreme Court appeals chamber confirmed Llarena's decision. Well, nothing has happened. But the prosecutor's request arrived on September 12th and will thus force Llarena to make a pronouncement.
And the one person missing after this was Aznar, who on Tuesday gave an apocalyptic speech to his supporters referring to the amnesty as constitutional self-destruction and calling for a large mobilization against the demands made by Carles Puigdemont in return for investing Pedro Sánchez with the votes of the Junts MPs. A demonstration has already been called for October 8th in Barcelona and the first to sign up was Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The People's Party (PP) will play hard on this, or at least, a certain PP, the one that wants to destabilize not only Sánchez, but also Alberto Núñez Feijóo. And this, on the same day that the party leader makes a gesture towards Junts, making it easier for it to have its own parliamentary group in the Senate (where the PP has an absolute majority), with all that that entails in terms of prominence and financial resources, in addition to swallowing something as indigestible as correcting his opposition in Congress.
There are no worse enemies than those in one's own party - as Winston Churchill said, "the opposition occupies the benches in front of you, but the enemy sits behind you." Sánchez and Feijóo, and not only those two, could teach a master's course on this. Which does not mean that the PSOE won't use this package of news to signal to the independence movement that nothing is easy and that everything takes time. That they should relax their demands. But, this time, he has already been told that payment is expected in advance. And the clock is ticking.