It is a first principle of negotiation that one doesn't offend the interlocutor sitting opposite by treating them as a fool or ignoramus. It is already understood that neither of the major Spanish parties, neither the PSOE nor the PP, were ready for a negotiation with Carles Puigdemont and that the general election results of July 23rd blew all their preconceptions to smithereens. But to bring up the reform of the autonomous community financing system, which dates from 2009 and should have been renewed in 2014, first under Mariano Rajoy and then by Pedro Sánchez, and which has now been resurrected by the acting finance minister, María Jesús Montero, as a gesture towards Together for Catalonia (Junts), does not even reach the category of a wink. One doesn't even need to shift in one's chair in response. Or even bat an eyelid.
For those who don't remember, the financing system offered would be equivalent to Jordi Pujol's "here chick, chick, chick" of 2002, the expression with which the Catalan president brushed aside the insistence of the PP given the very modest offers made at that time by José María Aznar. Said Pujol, referring to Aznar: "They come and offer us positions and perks. Who do they think we are? We are not in politics for the posts we can occupy, we are at the service of a project for a country. It is like my grandma when she used to go out to the hen house and call out to the chickens saying: 'here chick, chick, chick'".
If Sánchez really wants to get over the barrier of the investiture, he will have to put his feet on the ground in the situation, which he has not done. Even the PP is moving towards the configuration of the Bureau and the speaker's position in the lower house, which it knows it will not be able to retain for one of its deputies and has opened the prospects towards the broad block of peripheral parties. The PSOE will end up doing it too, it's just a matter of time. Always, the best placed, when this is considered, ends up being the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), although it is quite another thing for that to end up being of interest to the Basque deputies themselves.
The election of Congress's procedural Bureau, presided over by the speaker of the house, and the later investiture of the prime minister are different packages but also have their communicating vessels. The most important of these is the negotiator: Carles Puigdemont. The first issue to be considered, the amnesty, is the cornerstone of the negotiation and of a future agreement. It will not be left out in any of the possible scenarios and will have to be agreed out in the open by the candidate for head of the new government - or his appointed negotiator - and by president Puigdemont. Considering that he cannot travel to Spain, it will have to ratified in another country, not necessarily Belgium.
These will be the conditions - beyond the entire chapter dealing with powers and competencies - and an unequivocal assertion that any form of blackmail will not be accepted. The 'national' axis will be prioritised over the 'ideological' one, the left-right positioning. The fear of Vox, no matter how extreme right that party is, will not make the difference to the Junts negotiation. In any case, it will be the PP who will be unable to cross the red line. Thus, the Puigdemont manual begins to unfold and, moreover, it does so, it seems, without instructions for his interlocutors, who lived much better when the file on the exiled president was able to be left buried in the back of the closet.