The leadership of the PDeCAT (Catalan European Democratic Party), or what is left of it, got itself tied in knots at the weekend on social media in a debate on the future of Pedro Sánchez's Spanish government budget. This new Catalan party had seemed destined to replace the old centre-right Convergència and has instead become a bridge operation between that extinct group and the newer Together for Catalonia (JxCat), and even more recently the Crida, but over the last few months, it has become unsurprising to see its leaders airing their discrepancies in public. It's difficult to maintain a harmonious coexistence between the past, which wants to recreate Convergència, and the future, with leaders who are close to Carles Puigdemont, less accommodating to governments in Madrid.
But airing one's dirty laundry in public on the issue of the Sánchez budget is an imprudence. In particular, because the pro-independence groups - the Republican Left (ERC) and the PDeCAT - have declared that their support for the budget depends on the Spanish government making a political proposal involving Catalonia's prisoners, exiles and a future referendum. The debate, which PDeCAT's organizational secretary and MP, Ferran Bel, opened by arguing that they could acceptably support the budget with a procedural vote in the Spanish Congress, was knocked on the head by party vice president and also MP, Míriam Nogueras, reminding her colleague that the vote would be a 'no' on the budget itself, because the party had decided so, and the same would apply to the procedure.
The two figureheads of JxCat, Catalan president of the Generalitat, Quim Torra, and president in exile, Carles Puigdemont, immediately backed Nogueras. But that wasn't all. Bel then came back at Nogueras, pointing out that the position adopted by the party does not lock in the procedural vote against discussing the budget, conscious that this move would mean either voting alongside one of the Spanish right parties PP and Cs, or with those parties joining the vote for the PDeCAT amendment. At that point Nogueras left the fray. And the party's general coordinator, David Bonvehí, has stayed out of the debate.
Parties lose positions due to their division or failures to fulfil their promises. The PDeCAT has been practicing this sport for too long without anyone blowing the whistle.