This Wednesday marks two months since the Catalan parliamentary elections on February 14th. Elections about which it is not unreasonable to point out three things: the pro-independence parties took more seats than ever, 74 of the 135 that make up the Catalan chamber; the percentage of votes for independence was higher than ever and for the first time broke through the ceiling of 50% of total votes, standing at 51.7%, and the Republican Left of Catalona (ERC) defeated, by 33 seats to 32, Together for Catalonia (Junts) in the unresolved fratricidal battle for the political hegemony of the largest political space currently existing in Catalonia. Two months lost, certainly, in a battle that was journalistically exciting and of high news interest at first but whose fascination has flagged over time to the point that right now the public attention on the negotiations is out of obligation.
Meanwhile, life goes on in Catalonia without a president (Quim Torra was sacked by the judiciary), with a vice president acting in the president's role and an acting government in which each minister makes their own decisions. The negotiating committee meets without a fixed timetable, the accounts given of the negotiation are far from transparent and/or real, the messages issued are mainly for internal consumption for both organizations, and the days fall off the calendar with a wastefulness similar to that of the negotiations. The courtship between ERC and Junts that the pro-independence electorate has reluctantly imposed on them needs conditions that are being agreed on at snail's pace, while each of the two carefully scrutinizes the other to try to decide if they are bluffing and how they can get hold a larger slice of the pie.
However, this uncertainty, real or apparent, used as a negotiating strategy, means that if we were to talk about options that one could place a bet on, all of them would be alive. Far ahead of other alternative outcomes: the likelihood of an agreement, albeit in extremis, but also that of a minority government in which Junts facilitates the investiture of Aragonès as president but remains in opposition, and without completely ruling out going to the polls again, with all the risks and doubts that this entails, in an election that would be held in July. One of the most striking things is that the talks have not escalated to the well-known negotiating table and nor has there been much involvement of either the presidential candidate Pere Aragonès or the two leaders of ERC and Junts, Oriol Junqueras and Jordi Sànchez, both of whom have unquestionable authority to negotiate whatever is necessary and who are serving an unjust sentence in Lledoners prison but who, unfortunately, have time to talk if they have anything.
Each party has proponents within it of pushing the negotiations to the limit, forgetting that sometimes derailments occur. Hawkes and doves always coexist in a political organization, especially if it is large and solidly stitched together. After two wasted months, of sideways glances and meetings so tense that they were hardly able to be explained to public opinion, the parties have to decide whether they want to share out the government as in the last legislature but with the roles reversed, with the adjustments that are necessary, or to end their relationship and for each to explain to its parish the reasons for the inexplicable disagreement.