Junts “went to the mountain.” He will not vote on any Government initiative in Congress. Whether good or bad; whether or not Catalonia improves. He broke the deck.
Last week I indicated that the astral confluence in the political firmament of Junts and the PNV was being forged against Sánchez. But I wasn’t aware of how deep It is the rupture between the executive and Puigdemont.
Given this position, it is possible that the real rupture is something more than a parliamentary declaration.
Junts cannot vote on motion of censure that gives power to Vox. But it is clear that he wants to overthrow Sánchez’s executive and wants the government itself to leave. Hence his strategy of parliamentary paralysis. Junts wants to remove Sánchez from the government out of boredom.
However, Sánchez’s resistance manual consists of using the Ollendorff method. No matter what they tell you, you will answer what suits you best.
It is clear that the municipalities together are afraid that the Ripoll mayor’s activists will displace them in the next Catalan municipal elections.
Together: we will not vote in favor of any Government initiative.
Government: we will continue negotiating and agreeing until infinity and beyond.
Together: what do you do?
Government: I have decrees.
…….
Why was the decision so sudden? Where does the urgency come from? What changed?
Several hypotheses can be raised, the most plausible are two: a) the party’s middle cadres, at local level, want to halt the growth of the Alianza Catalana; b) The Catalan business community wants Sánchez out of Moncloa and Junts is one of its instruments.
Both are plausible. It is clear that the municipalities together are afraid that the Ripoll mayor’s activists will displace them in the next Catalan municipal elections. They will not be able to maintain anti-immigration proposals like those of Alianza Catalana. Especially when they support Sánchez in the national parliament, which carries the opposite flag, due to its pact with the extreme left.
Puigdemont could also give way to a new leader who would carry out this conversion
In this situation, the Junts must separate themselves from the PSOE as much as possible. He has already done this in the Catalan parliament. Now you have to do it in Spanish and actually act it out. The threat of finishing without doing so, which was what he decided last week, was not fooling anyone.
But alongside this electoral reason, Junts has a commitment to independent workers in Catalonia and to the Catalan business community (small, medium and large). Your voters and financiers. This electorate is outraged by the predatory and expropriating fiscal policy of the Sánchez Government, by the labor policy of its vice-president Yolanda Díaz and by the radical drift of the Catalan Government.
Some self-employed workers are suffocated by taxes that absorb half or more of their income (not counting VAT on their consumption). A micro and small company for which the reduction of working hours can be lethal.
Some large Catalan industrial and commercial business groups who see how their “business” is fleeing to other parts of Spain due to the joint policies of the ERC and the PSC. Junts depends electorally on the first group; of the second financially.
Isn’t it possible that your councilors, your voters and your financiers have pressed the message that enough is enough!?
They are not left-wing, they have nothing to do with Esquerra. Neither with the current Spanish Government, nor with the Catalan one. Only their tolerance for the independence movement, which is in decline.
Many would like to recover the spirit of the CiU pact. The CiU of the first years of democracy. The 92 Olympic Games, when Barcelona was the world capital and they were doing well.
Will Junts be able to make this turn with Puigdemont at the helm? Will Puigdemont be able to reach an agreement with Fejóo, as Tarradellas did with Suárez? Will he “convert” to transitional constitutionalism?
Difficult. But Mr Manuel Fraga has already said it: “Politics makes strange bedfellows.”
Puigdemont could also make way for a new leader who would carry out this conversion.
At this moment, the trajectory of the Junts star in the firmament approaches the dangerous astral confluence for Sánchez. How long will it be before another star of this political firmament who is a flamboyant ally of Sánchez does so? When will the PNV do so?
**JR Pin Arboledas is a professor at IESE.
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