As at other times in its recent history, political Catalonia is currently operating with one eye on the Parliament of Catalonia and the other on Spain's Congress of Deputies. The coincidence of dates, and even times, between the debate on the investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo and the general politics debate in the Catalan chamber before president Pere Aragonès has also contributed to the two levels of government converging and sideways glances being given. Feijóo has failed, as predicted, in the first vote, and will have a second chance to win the investiture at noon on Friday, although he has no chance and he can't find any way to amass 176 deputies - he falls short by four. In the leafy Parc de la Ciutadella, Aragonès exposed the parliamentary solitude of his minority Republican Left (ERC) government and he looked for strength to the parliamentary agreements reached over this past year. Meanwhile, Together for Catalonia (Junts) asked him for a change of course or elections and the Catalan Socialists (PSC) reiterated that it is not Catalonia that is failing, but its government.
Considering that the Catalan government is only supported by 33 deputies out of the 135 in Parliament and that over the past two years Aragonès has lost his support agreements with the nine of the CUP and the 32 of Junts, the president didn't really come out of the debate so badly. In fact, the lesson on display is a no-brainer: no other parliamentary party gives him stable support and it is only the infeasibility of an agreement between the deputies of Carles Puigdemont's party and those of Salvador Illa - because they are antagonistic to each other - that prevents a confidence motion from being presented successfully. Thus, what remains is noise, more or less continuous and tense, but, in practice, without any kind of consequence. It serves to keep the president marked, to make things difficult for him, but not to displace him from the presidency before the February 2025 elections.
It is an uncomfortable situation, but not insurmountable for the Republican Left. An example are the resolutions that the PSC and Junts have presented for voting on Friday, in which they ask the chamber to vote on its lack of confidence in the government, which, by extension, affects Aragonès. It is not formally a confidence motion, even if the president, in practice, is being censured by Parliament. It is a continuation of the confidence question that Albert Batet put to him a year ago, which Aragonès did not accept because it would rush him to early elections. Having said that, it will show the Catalan government's absolute minority in this matter, not at all minor: that the Catalan executive does not have the confidence of the chamber.
On Friday, three resolutions from ERC, Junts and the CUP will also be debated, and they will force the PSC to move out of the comfort zone which the Socialists occupy while waiting for Feijóo's investiture to end and fail, and for Pedro Sánchez to take over. As an important detail - because it has been repeated and rejected - Aragonès's proposal for a common pro-independence front in Madrid, to which Junts gave no attention, taking it to have been answered in the conversation held in Prada de Conflent between Aragonès and Puigdemont. The latter, as is known, rejected any joint strategy because they have different paths when they negotiate with the PSOE.
Aragonès's tortuous path will not precipitate an election in Catalonia or change the monochromatic ERC government. The cards seem to be dealt and finding a way out of the current situation in the short-term - via having a much larger government, for example - does not seem to be something that is up for debate, nor does it respond to the climate that we have seen these two days in the Catalan Parliament.