Concern in the PP over the approach to Junts: “We cannot afford to go any further” | Spain

“What did he say? What did he say? [¿Qué ha dicho?]”, PP deputy Guillermo Mariscal asked this Thursday insistently to the journalists who were still surrounding the Junts spokesperson, Miriam Nogueras, just when she had finished speaking in the Congress hallway. “That they are going to defend investments in Tarragona,” they responded, because that was the only thing Nogueras had said, but from which it was clear that Junts was going to vote that same morning alongside the PP to knock down the tax on large energy companies. “That’s it!”, celebrated Mariscal, the architect of that amendment negotiated with Carles Puigdemont’s party, and ran down the hall of Congress to tell his people the news.

Until that morning, the PP did not know for sure if Junts would respect the agreement they had already reached in the Senate. But he did it, and the result was that, for the first time for a major vote – the tax on energy companies enters the public coffers between 1,000 and 1,500 million euros per year -, a new majority formed by the PP was articulated, Vox, the PNV and Puigdemont’s party. The PP’s approach to Junts that made this agreement possible has caused concern in important sectors of the party, who warn that the PP “cannot afford to go any further” with the Catalan independentists.

From “Puigdemont, to prison!” that was chanted in the PP demonstrations against the amnesty law, to reach an agreement with Puigdemont’s party. The turn is total. Not long ago, just a few months, Alberto Núñez Feijóo linked the independence movement with terrorism. This past January, the PP proposed in Congress an initiative that would imply, if approved, the illegalization of Junts.

The turn of the PP in its relationship with the Catalan independentists is not new, because it began last summer, when it was learned that members of Puigdemont’s circle had met with the spokesperson for the popular parties in Barcelona City Council, Daniel Sirera, to talk of Feijóo’s investiture, which was ultimately unsuccessful. Now, Génova is once again approaching Puigdemont’s party to try to destabilize Pedro Sánchez’s parliamentary majority, opening a path with the independentists whose outcome is uncertain but which raises blisters within the PP.

“The big risk is legitimizing the alliances with the independentists,” warns a popular baron about this strategy of approximation of the PP to Junts, which happens after having actively and passively accused the PSOE of “betraying” the Spaniards for having agreed with this match.

The agreements with Junts especially bother the Catalan PP, the Andalusian PP and the Madrid PP, where veiled warnings are sent to Genoa. In the Catalan PP they alert the leadership that one thing is specific agreements on fiscal matters, and another, very different, would be to advance in a hypothetical understanding with Junts for an investiture or a motion of censure. “Does anyone believe that Puigdemont was going to ask Feijóo for something very different from what he asked Sánchez? Junts is not going to ask you for a road or a tax less, he demands legal and political amnesty, with the whitening of his figure, and moving forward in a federal and plurinational Spain, the driving goal for self-determination. The PP cannot allow such a thing,” reflects a leading party leader in Catalonia. “At the moment the red lines have not been crossed, the big question would be if we went one step further,” he warns. The leader of the PP in Catalonia, Alejandro Fernández, who confronted Genoa over alliances with the independentists, has been clear: “If it is to make a government pact, I believe that, honestly, Carles Puigdemont is toxic material and that the entire world that has approached him has been burned.”

Feijóo is not, at the moment, planning a motion of censure against Sánchez, as he said on Wednesday in an informal conversation with journalists, but in that same talk he praised the “coherence” of Junts and said he was learning Catalan, by listening to the Catalan deputies in Congress without earpiece.

“Hatred of Sánchez is a great unifier”

The PP has returned to the phase of speaking Catalan in private, and Génova has no qualms about deepening agreements with the Catalan independentists, with whom there are already contacts “at different levels.” Junts’ interlocutor with the PP to overturn the tax on energy companies has been the deputy Josep Maria Cruset, while deputies such as Guillermo Mariscal have intervened for the PP, in addition to the parliamentary spokesperson, Miguel Tellado, and the deputy secretary of Economy, Juan Bravo . Other PP leaders such as Deputy Secretary Elías Bendodo also communicate with Miriam Nogueras. “Hatred of Sánchez is a great unifier,” they confess in Genoa.

But Feijóo’s leadership has to manage its steps carefully, because important barons of the PP are very reluctant for the party to go further down that path. Between the lines, the president of Andalusia, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, has expressed these cautions. Although he has defended that the PP must have “the best possible relations with all democratic political formations”, among which includes Junts, Moreno Bonilla has also warned that “it is difficult to have a good fluid relationship” with Puigdemont’s party because these and the PP are “on two completely different shores in terms of the State model.” “We believe in the Spain of autonomies, but we believe in the territorial integrity of Spain, something that they do not believe, therefore, it is a complex path.”

Isabel Díaz Ayuso has the same misgivings, or more, but the president of the Community of Madrid is biting her tongue so as not to openly confront Génova. Ayuso has also handled herself with subtleties and has avoided speaking out on these agreements but, at the same time, she has wanted to send the clear message that “nationalism is the most toxic thing there is.” “I want nationalism very far away,” she stressed when asked about the PP’s pacts with Junts. Feijóo has the advantage that Ayuso is very busy defending herself in the cause of her partner’s alleged tax fraud and in her battle with the attorney general, and does not have time to open other fronts with the leadership of her party, as they confess in the Puerta del Sol: “We have enough of our own without getting involved in others.”