The EAJ (Basque Nationalist Party) has agreed to not present any amendments to the proposed Spanish budget and, with this decision, to ease its journey through Parliament, to smooth the path for Mariano Rajoy and the Partido Popular in the Congress. This has thrown cold water on the Catalan independence movement who, this time, trusted that the EAJ would keep its word: with article 155 of the Constitution being applied in Catalonia there would be no support for the Spanish government's budget.
EAJ's decision can be understood in the framework of Basque politics, and Spanish politics too. Basque nationalists have sufficient incentives to align themselves with the PP's accounts, since they are direct beneficiaries of several of the recent agreements which have improved even further the healthy Basque accounts. In a normal political situation there would be little to say, since, whether you like it not, politics ends up also being a defence of one's own interests.
The thing is, in any case, that the situation is not remotely normal. Article 155 has meant in practice the suppression of Catalan autonomy and, based on a police and legal narrative which has little to do with reality, half the Catalan government is in prison and the rest has had to go into exile. This circumstance is what, in the eyes of the independence movement, makes the decision especially painful. Maybe there'll be no public criticism. I don't know. And both PDeCAT and ERC are staying quiet. But EAJ has to know that it won't be a complicit silence, but a dejected one.
We'll see how they justify it in the coming hours and how they reconcile what they say they want to do -give an opportunity to open a new period of dialogue in the Spanish state, as well as the restitution of a legitimate government- with the repression and the stubbornness from the Spanish government. Experience doesn't invite optimism.