Junts per Catalunya and CUP wanted a photo of them in their seats in the Catalan Parliament today to demand the investiture debate which was postponed this morning by the Parliament's speaker, Roger Torrent (ERC). But, whilst the CUP deputies did take their protest photo, those from Junts per Catalunya had second thoughts and left the photographers hanging. The leaders of the coalition (or whatever it is) had realised that a photo of an insufficient minority or of a broken majority would only be celebrated by unionists and that they had to staunch the wound, not rub salt in it. And so they rolled up their sleeves. The postponed session won't take long to come around.
Now, for obvious reasons, ERC has never been nor will it be on the same side as any political party which could sound like, look like or in any way evoke the old Convergència, even one as different and diverse as Junts per Catalunya, but now Puigdemont's side and Junqueras's, despite themselves, are condemned to sail together, not so much to reach that promised Ithaca as to remain afloat with a certain dignity. In any case, as ERC's Jaume Rodri would say, they're not on the same side, but are in the same boat and if it sinks they will go down together. And if that were to happen, what would float to the surface would be all the crap accumulated since 1st October, including the disputes in the prisons which would make more than two million of us Catalans blush.
Everyone understood this after the first criticisms and immediately got to work trying to make the postponement of the debate decided by the Parliament's speaker as short as possible. God willing, we'll have a debate tomorrow or the day after. It helps, for once, that the Constitutional Court has today already rejected Junts per Catalunya's arguments and, as such, everyone can act in consequence. What the Catalan side cannot allow strategically is to lose the initiative and leave the calendar to the will of the Constitutional Court, which could drag out over weeks and months of deliberations, whilst article 155 and exhaustion take effect.
Given the way events have developed, the other thing the Catalan independence movement, any part of it, cannot let itself do is to strike down Puigdemont's candidacy before the Spanish institutions do so. If no dirtier plays come up which would make us think the worst, Puigdemont will receive the support of the Catalan chamber with the boldest formula imaginable and then we can talk. We can talk if it's agreed for Jordi Sànchez to assume the democratic role of leading a government on the orders of the legitimate president, Carles Puigdemont. The only strength which the Catalan sovereignty movement has is to put the Spanish state face-to-face with its own contradictions. All the Spanish efforts and traps are to avoid the king having to sign Puigdemont's appointment and they will find that, perhaps, Felipe de Borbón will have to receive at the Zarzuela palace a guy transferred by van from Soto del Real prison saying that he is merely bearing a message from the president in exile. It will be great.