JxCat amends Aragonès' government structure

BarcelonaAfter ERC's ultimatum to JxCat to reach a pact went without consequences, the two parties continue to negotiate without closing most of the most important folders. This Tuesday in the Parliament the main negotiating team, with the presence also of the vice-president, Pere Aragonès -as in the last two meetings in Lledoners prison-, has dealt with the structure of the Government. Junts has responded to the Republicans' proposal and now Esquerra will have to evaluate it. Tomorrow, Wednesday, the negotiating teams will meet again - the sectoral ones in the morning and the main ones in the afternoon - but behind closed doors, the two parties have already assumed that the negotiation is on the verge of reaching its limits.

A week ago today, the aspiring president put on the table its structure of government, which, as advanced by the ARA, proposed an executive with 14 Departments -the newly created would be that of Feminisms- and to unite Climate Action with Foreign Affairs. It also foresaw, as La Vanguardia published and sources familiar with the matter confirmed to this newspaper, a Presidency Department with broad powers: commissioning European funds, local administration, digital policies, and communication.

Junts per Catalunya does not like this approach, which considers that Esquerra intends to make a distribution that is too favourable to them compared to the one that Carles Puigdemont's party had during Quim Torra's presidency. To begin with, they aspire to recover Foreign Affairs, now in Esquerra's hands, and to keep the Ministry of Digital Policies, one of their flagships. At the same time, they will fight for the management of European funds, which they want to keep in the sphere of the economic vice-presidency.

The other major permanent discrepancy between the two partners of the Government is the strategy of the Catalan independence bid, since they continue to disagree on where to place the body that defines the direction (whether inside or outside the Consell per la República) and also what alternative to the table of dialogue they can build from the independence movement.

The uncomfortable consultation

However, the negotiation is not only doomed to the limit because of the issues it deals with, but also because of two external variables to the talks between the leaderships of Junts and ERC. Those of Carles Puigdemont have set that the bases will have to be consulted on the agreement reached with the Republicans -also what to do if there is a disagreement- and they will also have to fit it with the pact already signed between Esquerra and the CUP.

Since the spokesperson, Elsa Artadi, announced on Monday that the legislature pact would be submitted for ratification by the militants, opinions have begun to circulate internally in Junts about the position to be taken by the party. The MP Joan Canadell, who won the second round of the autumn primaries for 14-F, has issued a warning on Twitter. "We all know that 52% of the vote obliges us to complete the Catalan independence bid, but if this is not accepted by ERC, we will probably not be in government or we will have to repeat the elections", he said. This consultation is causing concern in Esquerra because it is interpreted as a further factor complicating the outcome of the investiture by making everything more unpredictable.