As everyone in Spain knows, el timo de la estampita (the prayer card scam) is a confidence trick which is often pulled in public places. Dreamt up, according to the records, over a century ago, a wise man and a fool end up ensnaring a passerby who ends up making off with some merchandise (originally prayer cards, hence the name) of some value which, in the end, they discover to be worthless. The police regularly warn that this scam is still used today. But it doesn't matter. In the end, there's always someone who'll bite.
I remembered this as I was following the soap opera all day of negotiations over a motion in the Spanish Congress for dialogue between the Spanish and Catalan governments "in which everyone can defend their ideas, aspirations and projects freely, without impositions or impediments. This process should aim to agree upon the legal and democratic means for Catalan society to determine its future in the framework of the applicable legal system". A text which, although it had concessions by PDeCAT from the beginning, the ones who had transacted it with PSOE, stood up because "the applicable legal system" at the end of the draft could be interpreted, rather generously, as being Catalan, Spanish or international legislation.
With the agreement reached between PSOE and PDeCAT, the Senate, which is a chamber we believed to be useless but which ended up approving article 155, debated another motion, in this case from the PP, to force PSOE into a corner, its hands tied by its parliamentary weakness and very fragile in its duel with PP and Ciudadanos over its Spanishness. This one was passed: "...to defend the unity of Spain in the face of any attempt for a secession referendum by one part".
This passed the ball to the Congress where Esquerra, with good reason, quickly distanced itself from the agreement between PDeCAT and PSOE. Now there wasn't a majority in the Congress to pursue it if not with PP or Ciudadanos. PSOE, moreover, put the squeeze on: the only applicable legal system is Spain's. And, as in the timo de la estampita, the stuff in PDeCAT's envelope was worthless. Or, indeed, less than worthless, coming the day after the Diada and the huge demonstration. At the last minute, PDeCAT took the best decision (and surely the only one possible): to withdraw the agreed-upon motion which was to be voted on this Thursday. Now they'll have to examine how it's possible that the old structures of the parliamentary group in the Congress, irritated with the party's change of direction, should end up impacting agreements without a father or mother but which can only be seen as breaches of election commitments.