The PSOE will try to redirect the negotiation with Junts in a meeting in Switzerland before Christmas | Spain

All roads lead to Carles Puigdemont. Every time there is a traffic jam in the legislature, the Junts leader is almost always the key to finishing the negotiations. It happened in the last one, that of the fiscal pact, when a video conference had to be improvised at night in which María Jesús Montero, Santos Cerdán and even the former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero were present, and on the other side Miriam Nogueras, Jordi Turull and the Puigdemont himself, who joined later. Once again, the situation has been complicated by Junts’ threat not to even negotiate the Budgets, something that was dropped this Wednesday on RNE Nogueras, and the solution involves Puigdemont. The PSOE and Junts are trying to close a new meeting in Switzerland, one of those they have held every month since they agreed to it more than a year ago, before Christmas.

There the representatives of Pedro Sánchez, led by Santos Cerdán, who has been in charge of the relationship with Junts, will try to redirect the negotiation to see if a path towards the Budgets can be started. It was in Switzerland, at another meeting in September, where the negotiation of the deficit path was reopened, which seemed doomed to failure, and there it was decided to postpone its presentation – it has not yet been done – and it is there where it can be reactivated again. if there is a rapprochement, although the meeting is not closed and could always be delayed if the environment is not ripe for progress.

Puigdemont and his followers complain of several non-compliance and even reproach the PSOE for an overly optimistic speech about overcoming the conflict in Catalonia, something in their opinion contradictory to the fact that there are meetings every month in Switzerland precisely to talk about possible solutions to that conflict. conflict. The socialists deny these breaches and Sánchez himself launched in the control session the idea that all his ministers repeat: “The Government will fulfill its commitments.” There are several key issues on the table that are very advanced, such as the transfer of immigration jurisdiction or the declassification of CNI documents on the attack on Las Ramblas in Barcelona, ​​but there is still a lot of negotiation pending, sources from both parties admit.

In this context of Puigdemont’s maximum prominence, through which all the relevant negotiations end up happening, the general secretary of the UGT, Pepe Álvarez, is also considering the possibility of going to Brussels to try to convince the leader of Junts to support the reduction in working hours that the Government and the unions have been trying to negotiate for a year without success with the employers. The CEOE believes it has the upper hand because it believes that, if this reform, led by the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, reaches Congress, it will be rejected by Junts and, therefore, will not be able to leave. The meeting between Puigdemont and Álvarez is not yet closed, but that possibility is on the table to try to seek their vote, which would allow this reform to advance, which would also greatly benefit Catalan workers, according to the unions. Yolanda Díaz and her team have also made representations to the Catalan employers’ association to try to get this regulation approved, which the Government has almost ready until it has decided whether to go ahead without the employers’ association, as everything seems to indicate.

Even Pedro Sánchez also seems willing to meet with Puigdemont in Brussels, as he said this Wednesday in an informal conversation with journalists at the Christmas drink in La Moncloa, although that meeting does not seem imminent and will certainly not be next week, when the President travels to the Belgian capital for an EU summit. Sánchez insists that the “coherent” thing after the pardons and amnesty would be to meet with Puigdemont and Oriol Junqueras if this Saturday he takes over the leadership of ERC or whoever wins that congress.

Sánchez was especially harsh with the PP and with its relations with the justice system. The president, who last week had already said that his Government is the victim of “harassment in the political, media and judicial spheres” went a little further in La Moncloa and maintained that he has the “feeling” that the PP plays “ with the marked cards” because he seems to have privileged information when advancing judicial decisions and predicting an “ordeal” for the members of the Government. “That worries me,” he insisted after remembering that Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s chief of staff, is announcing on social networks what some judges or prosecutors are going to do, and some PP spokespersons give details about the “judicial ordeal.” ” which according to them awaits the president. Sánchez thus suggests collusion between the PP and some judges.

The president insists that his Government has always respected judicial independence, and will continue to do so, but he assures that at this moment the PP is not a political opposition, with legitimate discussion about the Government’s management, but rather a destructive one focused only on the judicial agenda, and there he believes that some judge “contributes” to this opposition task. He has not named names, but in the past La Moncloa has been very critical of Judge Juan Carlos Peinado, who is handling the case of Begoña Gómez, whom he denounced for prevarication. Sánchez believes that this type of opposition is collapsing the image of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and is convinced that it will have no real effect on the Government, although he admits that the noise makes it difficult to highlight the positive data of the Spanish economy and the fact that a liberal magazine like The Economist places it as the economy with the best performance.

Sánchez also expressed confidence that an agreement can be reached with Junts and ERC, but assured that the real negotiation will begin after the Republican congress. The central issue to be able to begin the Budget negotiation with Junts is the transfer of immigration to Catalonia, agreed in January with the independentists. The Government, according to Executive sources, is opening itself to the possibility that there may be mossos in airports and ports that control security but maintaining border control in the hands of the State. A complex package of transfers on immigration matters is being negotiated that involves several ministries, and is very advanced, but the details are missing and everything can go wrong.

Sánchez admits that we will have to “work hard” to achieve this agreement and the Budgets, but believes that Junts “is wrong if it thinks that the citizens of Catalonia are asking for confrontation with the Government”, because it believes that it is the opposite, that they are demanding “pragmatism” to stop the possibility of a PP-Vox Executive, and is convinced that, apart from specific issues such as the amendment on electricity taxes that they presented on Tuesday, PP and Junts cannot get closer because that has a lot of political cost for the PP with Voice and for Junts with the independentistas who do not want to know anything about the PP. For this reason, the president believes that the legislature will be consolidated, although first it will have to meet again in Switzerland and close all the pending files in different ministries.