• Interview: Junqueras asks not to stop negotiations with the PSOE even if he is in prison
  • Pacts.ERC breaks negotiations with the PSOE until the government applies the EU ruling
  • PSOE.The Government trusts the negotiations with ERC for the investiture to what happens at the ERC congress

The political future of Pedro Sánchez is in the hands of the ERC bases, which this Saturday will be expressed at the congress that the party will hold to define its strategic line. Continue negotiating with the PSOE to prepare for independence in the medium term or back to support street and institutional turmoil? A question on which the republican conclave will turn, marked by the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) regarding the immunity of Oriol Junqueras. A great blow to the Catalan political board, which has given wings to the most hyperventilated sectors of independence, with Carles Puigdemont as a vanguard leader.

The discourse of the destabilization of the "oppressor" state, the idea of ​​the permanent revolution thus returns in Catalan separatism. This change in mood has forced the ERC management to activate in the last hours to control their bases and voters, who demand unilaterality and continue with the frontal clash with the State, and thus be able to close the investiture agreement with The PSOE

"We are going to do things well," say sources from the Republican dome. That is, allow Sánchez to remain president, even if he is not complying with the tight schedule set by the socialist leader. An ERC position that has received the support of the last CEO, a sort of Catalan CIS, which points out that 71.5% of Catalans endorse the PSOE-Podemos Government Pact, for 61.6% of Catalans.

However, the decision of the European court has caused the scaffolding of the pact that Republicans and Socialists had cooked urgently in recent weeks. The pressures of Ferraz and Moncloa for the latter to subscribe in the coming hours, as well as the statements of the PSOE Organization Secretary, José Luis Ábalos, also had a counterproductive effect, ensuring that they had renounced the unilateral route. A "serious mistake" for Republican negotiators.

"The negotiation should not be stopped"

With its reinforced moral authority, Oriol Junqueras took advantage of an interview in Catalunya Ràdio on Friday to send a message of calm to its bases, correcting the decision of the ERC dome to suspend the dialogue with the PSOE until the State Advocacy pronounce and apply the doctrine of the CJEU.

"You should not stop the negotiation in any case. You must be willing to always talk with everyone, regardless of whether or not I am in prison," he said. And the word of Junqueras is still mandatory mandate in ERC.

In parallel to these declarations, the plumbers of the formation worked for the territory and the different groups to avoid water leaks and surprises in the Saturday congress. A conclave in which the ERC management will make "some license" to the toughest sectors, articulated around the October 1 Collective . But controlled. They do not want excessive gesticulation to break the dialogue with the Socialists and endanger an alliance with the Spanish left that allows them to occupy the presidency of the Generalitat shortly.

The critical sector demands that all those convicted be "released" in the trial of the independence process to resume any type of dialogue with the PSOE, as well as not giving up the unilateral route and holding a referendum of self-determination.

To satisfy this part of the Republican bases, Junqueras gave them a wink in their statements by keeping the objective of secession intact. "The right to self-determination will always, always, be defended and should be exercised when there is a clear, explicit majority, expressed at the polls," he said.

The ERC plan

In this sense, the party wants to approve a political presentation in which it defends the referendum as "the best instrument to build the Catalan republic", mainly if it can be carried out in an agreed manner with the State. But without giving up other routes, because of "the repeated refusals of the State" to accept a Scottish model - the mirror in which ERC looks after the failure of 2017 - which would mean a new violation of the constitutional order.

They propose in their text, without ambiguities or safeguards, the option of forcing Spain to accept the holding of an independentist consultation as the only alternative based on a joint action of the political and social institutions that "combine strength and action". The recipe already known in Catalonia that combines, according to the moment and the separatist need, "constant mobilization with civil disobedience actions".

The last option that ERC assumes is to repeat, step by step, the route that led them to hold the illegal 1-O referendum and the subsequent unilateral declaration of independence of the Parliament. But this time trying to have "international complicities."

This paper lays the foundations of the gradualist strategy of Republicans. That now allows them to prop up a pact with the PSOE and Podemos to guarantee their support for the presidency of the Generalitat and expel Junts per Catalunya and the representatives of the atomized converging space from the institution.

Convert ERC into that pal de paller (central axis) of Catalan nationalism that was the CiU of Jordi Pujol for 23 years and, with the control of the safe and the great powers enjoyed by the Generalitat, move forward step by step towards a new proclamation of independence.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • ERC
  • PSOE
  • Oriol Junqueras
  • We can
  • Pedro Sanchez
  • Junts per Catalunya
  • Catalonia
  • Carles Puigdemont
  • CIS
  • President's Investiture

PoliticsOriol Junqueras demands "concrete assignments" to the Socialists

Investiture The Government trusts the negotiations with ERC for the investiture to what happens in the congress of the Republicans

General elections 2019A for an investiture the last week of the year: the PSOE progresses in the negotiation with ERC and they are cited in Barcelona