The two partners of the Catalan government broadcast this Tuesday without the slightest embarrassment, during the first session of the general policy debate held in Parliament, the serious disagreements which separate them. Of course, at the moment, even if the feeling is to be on the tightrope, neither side delivers the coup de grace. The President Pere Aragonès dusted off the proposal to reach an agreement with the central government, without timetables, to determine the conditions for a new referendum on independence, and Junts not only rejected it but also made a full-fledged amendment advances in the territorial axis. Albert Batet, spokesman for Junts, challenged Aragonès to comply with the government pact and even threatened to demand that he submit to a question of confidence, an announcement that comes after a month ago he warned that he would take the continuity of government to vote from the bases of the Junts if there was not a change of course towards secession. The CUP has also presented a motion for next week’s plenary session also asking for the vote of confidence.

“How are we going to trust a new proposal if the agreement that facilitated his inauguration is not respected? Do you intend to comply with it?” Batet snapped at Aragonès, in addition to insisting on the need to have “guarantees and concrete”. Not only that: Batet, in a sour tone, demanded that the Republican, if he does not propose them, submit to a question of confidence as Carles Puigdemont did in 2016, a maneuver that ended the promise of the then President organize a referendum to win the support of the CUP. Junts criticizes the ERC for ignoring their demands: to articulate a common strategic direction for independence, to act jointly in Congress and to change the orientation of the dialogue table. “We told him the right way and the opposite, without obtaining the expected result,” he reproached him.

The announcement of the possible request for a motion of confidence was greeted by an exclamation of surprise from the Republican caucus. Aragonès made it clear in the response that followed that he did not intend to submit to any movement that could “destabilize” his government, and challenged Junts to take the decisions he deemed appropriate. He did not explicitly mention a possible departure of the post-convergent government. “I put proposals on the table. If there are alternative proposals, I am ready to listen to them,” the Chief Executive said. “It is essential that we strengthen the government,” said Aragonès, who responded to Junts’ challenge by demanding loyalty. “Agreements must be reviewed in their entirety,” he said.

In a very long debate, the leader of the Junts took the floor after 9:30 p.m. and exposed the wound that separates the two partners from the Government. This ruined the efforts of members of the Government, who had conspired to make the debate a showcase to show the work of this year and a half of legislature and thus convey a message of unity despite the tumultuous relations of the parties that they make it up Aragonès, in his morning speech, had spared no effort to dwell on the work of each of the directors, whatever their political color, although he never mentioned the name of his associate, Junts. The leader of the Republicans had also taken advantage of the desk to announce a plan to help families in the face of inflation and the energy crisis: 300 million euros which, for the most part, depend on the next accounts to come ( always in the air) to go there.

The President he seized free day care and it is obvious that he only approved a law, that of the budgets, in which he takes office. But the attention of the hemicycle – with Laura Borràs, suspended president of the Chamber, following the session from the guest gallery – was on what would be the proposal of Aragonès on the sovereign question. A month ago, Junts warned that if the course on the road to independence was not changed, it would be the base that would have the last word on the continuity of the executive. Thus, the new commitment to the motion of confidence was received with astonishment. “I will not enter into any game that paralyzes institutions,” Aragonès said.

The path of the pact with the central government that Aragonès proposes seeks to gather the experience of what happened in Canada in 2000, when Parliament – following a judgment by the Supreme Court of Canada – approved the so-called clarity law to establish the terms on which a referendum on the secession of Quebec could take place. The Republican aspires to an agreement, not a law, which proposes “when and how Catalonia will be able to exercise the right to decide again”. The legal situations of the two states are completely different and difficult to assimilate, but Aragonès intends to establish parameters similar to those agreed for the Canadian province: clarity of the question, who decides it and what the necessary majority might be (the Canadian Supreme Court no. never quantified this scale). Of course, the triumph of yes, according to the Supreme Court of Canada, did not imply the possibility of secession, but rather the opening of the process of constitutional reform.

Aragonès assured that his proposal, “scrupulously democratic”, is aimed at both independentists and non-independentists. And he was inspired by the surveys of the Center for Opinion Studies of the Generalitat (CEO) to justify that the referendum is a proposal for transversal acceptance. According to the CEO, holding a referendum is the preferred option of voters from all parties except those of the PP and Vox. In the PSC, support reaches 73.7%. If you look at Ciudadanos, the support is 50%. “This social majority exists and no one can ignore it,” he said.

The proposal, without dates or timetables, also seeks to attract the attention of the international community: this is why the same terminology of the Canadian case is used. This would imply that a consensus is first reached with the entities, parties and unions in Catalonia, and then presented to the government. The central executive has actively and passively ruled out the possibility of holding an independence referendum in Catalonia and the minister spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, yesterday reiterated the door slam. After the Council of Ministers, he regretted that the separatists maintained “their maximum demands which are not at all shared by the government”.

The PSC, the main group in the House, tiptoed through the proposal and its leader, Salvador Illa, called it “déjà vu”. This is an uncomfortable question for socialists, since until less than a decade ago the PSC advocated holding a concerted referendum. In one of his political speeches, he even included a path similar to the Canadian Clarity Act that finally disappeared from the final text approved in 2016. In Comú Podem, on their part, they recalled that in his time , the deputy Xavier Domènech had made a similar proposal and that resulting from the ranks of the Republicans was then qualified as “past screen”. Aragonès is now asking the leader of this formation, Jéssica Albiach, to put pressure on the central government to give the green light to the plan.

The debate over Catalonia’s adjustment to Spain is relegated to a pressing need for the government: that of approving budgets. The alliance between ERC and Junts adds 64 deputies and needs at least four other votes of support to validate the accounts. Once the CUP has already moved away from this possibility, the commons announce themselves as potential allies. The CPS is also open to negotiations, but within the government there is little sympathy for this option.

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