Because between now and August 25th, the day on which new elections will automatically be called in Catalonia if no candidate has won an investiture vote in Parliament, we will see Pedro Sánchez and the Socialists (PSOE) saying one thing about Catalonia's autonomous community funding one day and the opposite the next, the best option will be to let the topic cool down a bit so as not to confuse people. Sánchez, a professional tactician, has already sold us two contradictory stories in 24 hours. The friendly one, through an interview appropriately sweetened to please the blessed Catalans, and the message to be heard across Spain so that no-one will be upset, that there will not be a "concert" or anything like that, that is to say, the Generalitat of Catalonia is not going to be allowed to collect and manage its own funds, as they do in the Basque Country.
As in the Yenka, that dance from northern Europe that caused a furore in Spain in the sixties, in which people make little jumps from one side to the other to always end up in the same place, the funding that the PSOE has in mind is an evolution of the system, rather than a change in the system. The truth is that I thought that the PSOE would keep going with a singular funding proposal for a few more days as a landing strip so that the talks between Salvador Illa and the Republican Left (ERC) negotiators would have something to take hold of. So that there would be more than just words in the promise of a left-leaning Catalan government and the Good News of the alternative-left Comuns blocking the way to the right of Together for Catalonia (Junts). But Sánchez has given instructions to put away, for now, such promises to the Republicans.
Maybe it's because there's still a lot of time left to play this game or because the slippery concept of singular funding for Catalonia doesn't hold up either, while the seams of a dress that's too tight and about to split are real. In fact, it was not Sánchez, nor Illa, nor the Government currently in office, but Alicia Sánchez-Camacho, in October 2013, when her name had not yet appeared linked to the La Camarga recording, who rescued a proposal approved by the Catalan People's Party in its congress in May 2012, of a unique funding system for Catalonia within the law on funding of the Autonomous Communities. If they had looked in the news archives, they might have seen it as worth explaining in a different way, since trying to present as a radical change of the system an offer that breaks with the past to end up following in the footsteps of Sánchez-Camacho, more than a decade later and with everything that has happened since, will cost them, both the Spanish and Catalan Socialists.
The autonomous community funding that the PSOE has in mind is an evolution of the system, rather than a change in the system
But let's be patient. Before all that, it will be necessary for the speaker of Parliament, Josep Rull, to ascertain from the leaders of the parliamentary groups that no one has the votes to be elected. At least, for now. The Catalan Socialists have been told to slow right down, since its future is in the hands of ERC, which has to simultaneously decide the political orientation of the party as it goes about fighting the battle for the new leadership that must emerge from the party congress called for November 30th. Meanwhile, Carles Puigdemont has raised the tone towards Pedro Sánchez, whom he has accused of being immoral for introducing the issue of financing and improving the well-being of Catalans only if they vote for Salvador Illa as president. Beyond considering it blackmail, the situation shows the breakdown of trust between the PSOE and Junts and between Puigdemont and Sánchez.
It is still too early to say whether it is already irreversible, but the distance between the two has been widening for some time now, far from narrowing. In the end, what is happening is a very blunt message from Puigdemont to Sánchez: it cannot be possible that when you lose at the polls you win in the offices - in Spain and in Barcelona city - and when you win in the Catalan election you also end up winning. Three out of three is an unjustifiable plan.