Antoni Bassas' analysis: "The government believes it's time to sign the financing agreement with Montero."

Two weeks ago, we told you here that Salvador Illa's government saw a financing agreement with María Jesús Montero as close as possible, because Pedro Sánchez had ordered the pace of negotiations to be accelerated to reach an agreement before the end of this year. Sánchez had an incentive to do so: the PSC (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) is essential for him to be able to win the elections, and Esquerra (Republican Left) is essential for his investiture.

Well, yesterday Vice President Montero, who is negotiating on behalf of the Spanish government, He said the funding will arrive "as soon as possible"She said this at an event in Barcelona, ​​and Esquerra confirmed that "we're getting close to a figure that could be interesting." She's referring to the amount of money that would correspond to Catalonia as a result of the agreement. But of course, Montero isn't just the one holding the key to the Spanish savings bank; she'll also be the Socialist candidate to preside over Andalusia, and anything she "gives" to Catalonia will be used against her. ("Give" to use the Spanish term, because they don't give us anything; they just give us back what we pay.) And Montero said it like this:

"We are working hard to fulfill the various requirements we have on the table. One is what was signed and agreed upon in the bilateral meeting with the Generalitat of Catalonia, but also the president's commitment that no autonomous community will lose resources and that solidarity will be guaranteed throughout the country."

In other words, the eternal squaring of the circle with money in Catalonia: it will have fair funding, but no one will lose out.

This morning, direct sources involved in the negotiations told us that the agreement is very close because it meets much of what ERC proposed; this means that it contains a financing model and not just a figure for next year, and that the government is of the opinion that if the agreement meets much of what was requested, it's time to take a step forward and sign it, because if they become purists, a historic opportunity will be lost, so either it's closed within weeks or it will be stalled. This is this morning. We'll follow up and explain it to you, of course.

Meanwhile, the Juntos mayors of Sant Cugat del Vallés, Vic, Sant Clemente de Llobregat, Cabrera de Mar, Maçanet de la Selva, and Font-rubíThey met with President Puigdemont in Waterloo In the presence of the party's general secretary, Jordi Turull. Mayors are the first to vote and are very sensitive to issues such as home occupations, repeated offenses, and the effects of registration on public services. On the way out, they closed ranks, reminding everyone that Puigdemont was a former mayor and understands their problems, and that the vast majority of the Junts leadership comes from the municipal world. And that, if anything, the problem isn't internal but rather stems from factors such as the fact that his speech on jobs in Congress will be halted by the PSOE because he "looks askance at Podemos" and has stalled the speech.

By the way, the day has provided us with an unprecedented image: a former president of France entering prisonAt 9 a.m., Nicolas Sarkozy publicly embraced his wife Carla Bruni and got into a car that took him to the Santé prison in Paris. Just as, after the reconstruction of Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Paris Olympic Games, it seemed that France was on the mend, the constant government collapses and the scandalous (because it was so easy) theft of Napoleon's jewels from the Louvre put France in the news for reasons no country wants to be in the media.

Good morning.