The speaker of the Catalan Parliament, Roger Torrent, has just proposed a government of unity as a response to a guilty verdict from the Spanish Supreme Court against the accused members of the 2017 Catalan government and pro-independence civil groups. It is not the first time that this formula has been proposed in recent times and, if it were possible, it would undoubtedly be the most powerful response that could be offered from the independence movement to the Spanish 'deep state', since it would bring together, as well as the current Catalan executive made up of the two main pro-independence parties JxCat and ERC, the two left-wing groups of the CUP and the Comuns.
A parliamentary and social majority able to repeat the broad alliances of October 1st and 3rd, 2017: from the referendum to the popular response to the repression and denial of freedoms. Yet, having set out the advantages of a government majority such as this, it does not seem that, at present, there is a consensus to work in this direction. Basically, because the Comuns feel enormously resistant to everything to do with JxCat, which they do not cease to link to the old Convergència party, and since the start of the independence process, they have not responded affirmatively even once to significant proposals that this party has formulated, beginning with the Catalan government budgets. More recently, the Comuns snatched the mayoralty of Barcelona from ERC and its election night winner, Ernest Maragall, after a pact with the Spanish right under Manuel Valls.
In any case, Torrent's proposal leaves another question in the air: are all scenarios open after the Supreme Court verdicts? Because a few hours after Torrent's plan, the ACN news agency published a story indicating that president Quim Torra had asked or hinted to the parliamentary speaker that maybe there could be another attempt to invest Carles Puigdemont as president. Although the Catalan government later dampened down this inference, there is no doubt what Torra's real intentions were. It doesn't seem intelligent to send up trial balloons at this time, if that's what it was - maybe it wasn't.
In such a case, though, one could conclude that JxCAT deputies sees these two ideas, a coalition government and the investiture of Puigdemont, as compatible. Sincerely, if it's hard to see the Comuns supporting the first option, the second is much more difficult. And what does the CUP have to say about all this? Has this weekend's independence movement summit in Geneva moved in the same direction? Because if not, all this would be quite contradictory.