MANUEL VALLS 27/11/2019 01:38
It cannot be explained more clearly what is really behind the approach with which ERC demands a negotiating table in exchange for allowing the investiture of Pedro Sánchez as president of the government.
The proposal was made by Pere Aragonès, national coordinator of Esquerra, in an article published in La Vanguardia on Monday. In summary, ERC asks the PSOE for a dialogue (“negotiating table”) with these four legs: 1. “Equal to equal. From Govern to Government ”. 2. “No conditions.” 3. “With a clear calendar.” 4. And guaranteeing that the agreement reached will be submitted to a referendum of the Catalan people.
These are conditions that are impossible to accept. Because you can’t talk about everything. There are things that cannot enter the agenda. And the inclusion of a bilateral meeting before the investiture, the first stage of that “clear calendar”, would leave the unborn government dead.
There were times when the Spanish government on duty used the votes of Jordi Pujol. Now it seems that the independentists want to return to that path, an opaque policy of quid pro quo unfair that gave such a dire result to this country.
The independentists must accept that the majority of Catalans flatly reject their procedures
As Coll well remembers, one of the most lucid voices in the murky Catalan political landscape, the Generalitat and its Government are part of the structure of the State, so that the president is his maximum representative in Catalonia.
It is incomprehensible that Aragonès does not want to attend to this reality or assume that a majority of Catalans do not want independence. Nor does he recognize that the economic impact of his secessionist adventure is ruining thousands of Catalan families, that coexistence has broken and that the European Union is and will be against it.
The reality is that the process has blown up the basic consensus on which politics and coexistence in Catalonia rested: school, language, media … And it has shown that the problem is not of Catalonia with the rest of Spain but among Catalan citizens. The picture would not be complete without the evidence that independence has ended up wielding its violent arm as a negotiating asset. The situation has reached a blocking point. The Government of Pedro Sánchez does not act in Catalonia because he knows that the sinking of the process is irreversible, although the price of his short-term strategy is proving too high for Catalans who respect the laws.
Sanchez has done wrong in not giving an answer to the majority of Catalans, who is suffering a painful situation; that are victims of episodes of violence and coercion pulled from the Catalan Government. They feel abandoned and orphaned because nobody has a long-term strategy to reverse the situation. As strange as it may seem to the independentists, the solution to this serious problem that has been conceived by the unanimous critique of all Europe – with the exception of Salvini and little else – is in the hands of politicians like Aragonès himself. They have to accept that the majority of Catalans flatly reject their procedures and that insisting on imposing themselves by way of deeds is undemocratic.
It must be strange to those who have believed the proclamations of Junqueras, Puigdemont, Torra or Aragonès to discover that they are supporting those who adopt methods of the new populist pack that horrifies Europe. Who was going to tell them that their “national feeling” would end up relying on characters like Arnaldo Otegi.
The level of tension has become so high that even Ernest Maragall participated a few days ago in a concentration against the presence of King Felipe VI in Barcelona in which they were shaken, assaulted, spit and insulted ordinary citizens and a Barcelona councilor as he. Only in a double recognition, to the Constitution and to the will of the majority, can a solution be found. In respecting the decisions of the Judiciary and in admitting that the dialogue has perfectly defined channels in the bodies of debate and decision that the citizens of this country have given us democratically. That is, in the Congress of Deputies and in the Parliament of Catalonia. Everything that gets out of this would be a very dangerous political adventure that would leave the future of Spain in the hands of the independentists and their secessionist project.
https://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20191127/471902150217/una-mesa-inservible.html
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