The week in which the PSC and ERC reconciled

BarcelonaThe seal on the agreement was put by Salvador Illa and Oriol Junqueras in a meeting of just over two hours at the Palau de la Generalitat on Tuesday afternoon. But the pact had been being forged since the previous weekend after days of deadlock. At the Palau and at the PSC headquarters, the strategy of buying time to avoid a parliamentary defeat that would have left the executive shaken eventually prevailed. The party's number 2, Lluïsa Moret, had a lot to do with it, explain various sources to ARA. But to limit the damage, the socialists demanded, in return, a commitment from the republicans to stop positioning the IRPF as a red line. All this, to reset the clock. To get here, however, the conversations went through ups and downs, from tense meetings to lunches and homemade doughnuts to save the negotiation.

On February 20, everything was on track for the budgets to get moving and for the Government to have them approved for Easter. But Esquerra's 'no' unsettles Salvador Illa's executive. It was the meeting between the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the leader of the republicans, Oriol Junqueras, that made the party change its mind. "It didn't go well," admit sources from both sides. Nor did the call that Junqueras received that same day from the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, closing the door on transferring IRPF revenue to the Catalan Tax Agency. ERC made a U-turn and refused to negotiate the accounts, a move that angered the Government and damaged the relationship.

Tensions escalated when the Government approved the budget project without an agreement with the republicans. The next day, ERC responded by announcing a motion of censure. Although it was evident externally that the relationship was not going through its best moment, internally, both sides agreed not to blow up the dialogue space that had been open for months and maintained communication channels. On the PSC side, the Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau; the party's number 2, Lluïsa Moret; the PSC leader in Parliament, Ferran Pedret; and the Secretary of the Government, Javier Villamayor, participated. ERC's negotiating team is headed by the party's general director, Lluís Salvadó; and he is accompanied by the deputy general secretary, Oriol López; the deputy secretary of Communication, Isaac Albert, and also the two spokespersons in Parliament, Ester Capella and Jordi Albert.

Nobody wants to break, even though the rope has been tightened. It is evident in the dinner on March 2. The two teams meet at the Diputació de Barcelona to negotiate, but end up talking about everything except what they were concerned about. "We would have ended the dinner completely argued," points out a knowledgeable source to explain why neither the budgets nor the IRPF appeared that day in the conversation of a relaxed meal. The negotiators have tried to preserve the good "climate of personal respect" at all times. This is evidenced by details such as Pedret showing up at one of the meetings with some fritters made by himself – the head of the PSC in Parliament is known for having a good hand with cooking and baking.

Blockage in negotiations

Conversations continue in the following days in various spaces: the Diputació de Barcelona, the Parliament, and also at the Palau de la Generalitat. The negotiation, however, enters a state of deadlock. "We are entering a phase of certain distancing," points out a negotiating source. Esquerra notes that no gesture will come from the Spanish government regarding IRPF and already conveys to the Government that the accounts are destined for failure if Salvador Illa does not back down and withdraw the bill. The Government, however, wants guarantees that there is room to maneuver in the negotiation if it takes this step. The tension does not subside and on Thursday the 12th the meeting ends badly.

The deadline for an agreement is approaching: March 20, when the plenary session for the general debate on the budgets is to be held. And it is on the weekend that things begin to move. From Friday onwards, Lluïsa Moret assumes a predominant role, according to sources. On Sunday, the two teams meet at the Palau with two documents on the table: one from the PSC and another from ERC. Work is already underway on the premise that the Government will withdraw the budgets, but they are negotiating how. Dalmau demands guarantees that ERC will not walk away from the table. From that meeting, they emerge with an almost consensual document that they agree to finalize on Monday.

The objective was to reconcile the priorities of the Government and ERC. The executive wanted the Republicans to commit to approving the accounts before the summer, and Esquerra prioritized the fulfillment of the investiture agreements. The middle ground ends up being that both sides commit to reopening negotiations to have the budgets approved before July 31, but in return, the red line of the IRPF falls from the text. ERC assumes that it will not be able to have a commitment from the PSOE before June and, in fact, according to various sources, they already place the horizon in the autumn.

"Buying time"

The last loose ends are tied up on Tuesday morning in a meeting at the Palau between the two negotiating teams, and in the afternoon in a two-hour meeting between Salvador Illa and Oriol Junqueras. The agreement will be made public on Wednesday before the control session in Parliament. It is a Solomon-like solution to "buy time", as described by a source present at the talks. In fact, the socialists assure that the international war context influences this, and that the first economic consequences of the conflict in the Middle East are beginning to emerge. "ERC is aware that we could not expose the country to instability", emphasize sources from Pallars. "It is a victory that they withdrew the budgets, because they made a mistake in presenting them", they point out from Calàbria.

For a high-ranking government official, the diagnosis is that the PSC and ERC have stalemated, and that in the struggle to get their way, they have only ended up tearing off "a few feathers" in the game of chicken that the two parties got bogged down in. Some voices, more optimistic, speak of a "win-win", while a negotiator quotes the French socialist Jean Jaurès when asked about the balance of the talks: "History teaches us the difficulty of great tasks and the slowness of achievements, but it justifies an invincible hope". And now, what about the talks? According to sources consulted, they continue: "This very day, at the bar in Parliament", they pointed out from the Palau on the same afternoon that the president announced the withdrawal of the accounts and Junqueras admitted the reduction in the demand for personal income tax. Next week, in fact, there are already meetings scheduled.