A discussion over the figure of the international mediator last week jeopardized the agreement between PSOE and Junts per Catalunya for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez. The negotiating teams of Carles Puigdemont and the president of the Government in office met 10 days ago in a hotel room in the Madrid neighborhood of Argüelles to advance the negotiations and addressed one of the key issues that remained at that time still to be resolved: the demand of the independentists to name what They call an international verification team that must rest, in their opinion, on three legs: political, economic and legal.
The position of PSOE Initially, it was an absolute rejection of the appointment of a verifier in any of its variants, which triggered tension. There was a crash. After verifying that Junts’ position was inflexible and that they threatened to blow up the agreement, the socialists, in which the party’s number three, Santos Cerdán, has always played a key role, put a shortlist of mediators on the table. of Spanish nationality among those who suggested the lawyer and father of the Constitution Miquel Roca The red line that the socialists had marked was to avoid granting the internalization of the conflict, elevating it to another level, as they have always wanted. Puigdemont.
The reply of the independentists, whose negotiating team has been made up, among others, of Jordi Turull y Miriam Nogueraswas that they refused to admit that the verifiers were those proposed by the PSOEwhich led the team Sánchezin an attempt to redirect the waters, to allow together chose the names from the shortlist as long as they were of Spanish nationality. The men of Puigdemont They once again rejected the socialist approach and decided to appoint a verification team made up exclusively of foreigners.
This confrontation is one of the reasons that ran the dialogue aground and slowed down time. For a few days, in PSOE The percentage of conviction that there would be an investiture dropped. And, just in case, a cushion began to be prepared in case the negotiation could founder. “This is not easy,” negotiation sources stated at the time. The conviction that “there will be a Government” was replaced by “when there are agreements and if we achieve them” or “those agreements, if they are reached”, aware that the requirement for international verification was blocking everything.
According to several sources participating in the negotiations to which EL MUNDO has had access, the tension over this section has led to an approach towards this formula, which should be responsible for validating whether Sánchez is fulfilling the agreement with Junts. In this sense, it would depend on their reports during the next legislature whether Puigdemont’s party supports the budgets of the Government and Sánchez’s future will at all times be in the hands of this formula. Because, although a channel of communication and dialogue has been opened, mistrust still exists between the parties. Hence, one party wants verification and the other wants “guarantees”, to seal a “legislative agreement” that guarantees governability and avoids the danger that the Executive can fall at the first opportunity.