Even the huge Ever Given container ship has been refloated and sent on its way in the Suez Canal before any rescue has been possible of the Catalan government agreement between the Republican Left (ERC) and Together for Catalonia (Junts), which ran aground last Friday. The Parliament of Catalonia will once again host a frustrated investiture session on Tuesday, four days after the first one. Junts still does not accept the ERC programme for a new shared pro-independence government and thus will not support its candidate Pere Aragonès. The abstention of Junts, hinted at a few days ago and confirmed this Monday, did not surprise anyone, but it does throw another bucket of cold water over the already-chilly relationship between the two partners. Although Catalan politics has the knack of coming up with last-minute plot twists, there is nothing to suggest that there might be one this Tuesday. Aragonès will lose the vote again with 42 votes in his favour (ERC and CUP), 61 against (PSC, Vox, Comuns, Cs and the PP) and the 32 Junts abstentions.
Since the dawn of Spain's regime of '78, no Catalan autonomous president has ever been successfully sworn in after failing at the first two attempts. Indeed, Artur Mas is the only one who stumbled in two assaults in a row, in 2015, and he ended up "stepping aside" to make way for Carles Puigdemont. If Aragonès obtains the investiture in the next two months, he would become the first president to make it third time lucky. In fact, ERC sources see in the new blockade by Junts a desire to weaken the figure of Aragonès and return the barb which they felt they received on January 30th, 2018, when the investiture vote on candidate Carles Puigdemont was not permitted to go forward: the point of origin of all subsequent battles over the last three years.
The question, once the second frustrated vote is over, is whether they will be able to reach agreement before the deadline for new elections, May 26th, or whether, if they don't, ERC will venture further to explore other alliances. If there is no president on the last Wednesday in May, the elections will be repeated in mid-July.
The Republican Left argues that there are no "insurmountable barriers" that justify the position of Junts, who admit progress has been made but insufficient to change the sign of their votes. On Friday they did not feel that Aragonès's speech was addressing them, and now they expect to receive some gestures tomorrow in his second discourse.
Changes at the Council for the Republic
Among the missing elements on Friday, Junts noted the absence of any reference to the Puigdemont-led exile body in Belgium, the Council for the Republic. And it is precisely in this chapter, that there have been developments. Both parties now agree that they are in a position to overcome this obstacle. The Waterloo-based Council announced on Monday that it is open to remodelling its structure to make it more transversal. In practice, to expand the presence of ERC and incorporate the CUP. To do so, the Council proposes a five-way summit that should be held as soon as possible.
In ERC ranks, there is concern to prevent the Council from being a counterweight to the Aragonès presidency. The party now feels that it has paved the way for an understanding on the role of the exile body, by managing its role in the independence process under joint strategic control, and what's left to be decided are "loose ends" that do not need to hold up the investiture. Junts, however, wants to close a full agreement for the legislature and leave nothing in the air, especially after the last few years of mistrust between the two pro-independence partners.
The common ground between the strategies of both parties for the route to independence has not yet been traced out. ERC earlier reached agreement with the third pro-independence party, the CUP, to allow two years of margin for the government-to-government dialogue table set up last year. Junts go along with this, despite their skepticism. What remains to be decided is what would happen once it was established that the path of dialogue was not making progress towards the goals of a referendum and an amnesty, as the Catalan parties want. The ERC-CUP agreement speaks of a "new contention, preferably in the form of a referendum." An approach that just doesn't just match the Junts idea that the mandate of the referendum already held, that of 1st October 2017, remains fully valid.
At the same time, Junts spokesperson Elsa Artadi and her team are working for the 23 pro-independence deputies in the Spanish Congress in Madrid to speak as one voice, with unity of action, especially on issues related to Catalonia. ERC, however, disagrees, and recalls that its 13 seats are what make the difference in terms of influencing Pedro Sánchez.
Dissonance in social agenda
Beyond the road to the republic, there are also dissonances in relation to the social agenda for the new government to follow. ERC and the CUP agreed in the document that made possible the smaller party's investiture support for Aragonès, to move towards an internalization of services in health - instead of outsourcing - as well as the nationalization of key utilities such as water and electricity, and the withdrawal of support for private education. Junts, on the other hand, favours maintaining the public-private management model that has functioned over recent years in Catalonia.
The European piggy bank
As well as all this, the negotiating teams have not yet formally started talks on what the structure of the new government should look like. It is assumed that there will be an exchange of portfolios that will tend to invert the last government's distribution, but not a full mirror image.
ERC, as the largest party and therefore with an expectation to lead, wants to introduce changes. There is at least one: the creation of a specific commissioner to manage the European funds and to depend directly on Aragonès, and this proposal rubs Junts up the wrong way. The Puigdemont party aspires to assume the economy portfolio, linked to that of the vice-presidency, and both of these, if there are no changes, would go to Artadi. And Junts sees that the piggy bank of European Covid crisis funding should also come under her management.
Neither ERC nor Junts want to repeat elections. They have two months to avoid them.
In the main image, Aragonès and Batet converse during the failed investiture session on Friday. / EFE