Miquel Iceta said that, when the time came, pardons could be a way out for the leaders of the Independence bid who were to be tried in the Supreme Court. It was December 13, 2017, during the election campaign in Catalonia, and there was still more than a year to go before the trial and almost two for the conviction of sedition. Now it is an unknown whether or not former president Carles Puigdemont will return to Spain, but the Minister of Culture and Sports and leader of the Catalan Socialists' Party has already spoken in favour of granting pardons if he chooses to follow the same path as his former colleagues in Government. He did so this morning in an interview on RAC1, as last time: "I think he should decide to return and submit to the courts. Then, between all of us, we should be able to find happy solutions, as we have found with the pardon of those already sentenced by the Supreme Court".

Rumours had been circulating in the Spanish capital for a long time about the government crisis that Pedro Sánchez was preparing, but no one could have suspected that it would have the scope it has finally had. Up to seven new ministers (five women and two men) will form part of an executive from which heavyweights of Sanchezism fall, such as the former vice president Carmen Cavo or José Luis Ábalos, who also leaves the post of secretary of organisation of the PSOE after having been the right hand of Sanchez since he regained the general secretariat of the party. The reshuffle also affects the team closest to the president, since it dispenses with his main adviser, Iván Redondo, who held the position of head of cabinet, in a news received with satisfaction in the PSOE, which had always distrusted the excessive power that he had accumulated.

The PSC has held this Saturday its first national council since Catalonia has a new Government of ERC and JxCat, but the main theme of the conclave has focused on an issue that is on the table of the Spanish government: the pardons of political prisoners. The Catalan socialists have closed ranks with the position of the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, who has shown himself in favour of granting them partially, and have harshly criticised the campaign that the triple right wing of PP, Cs and Vox has already launched against the granting of this measure of grace.

The leader of Òmnium, Jordi Cuixart, has justified his controversial embrace with Miquel Iceta during the inauguration of Pere Aragonès as president of the Generalitat because he does not want "the seed of hatred and resentment to germinate". "When I see Iceta I embrace him because of the will of the independence movement to build a single people and because I do not want to confront the democrats of Catalonia", said the leader of the entity in an interview with RAC1 from prison to refute the criticism he has received from the independence movement for this gesture. After underlining the broad electoral support that the socialists have, especially in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, Cuixart said that the PSC has a "key role" in the resolution of the political conflict and that it is necessary to deepen the path of "dialogue" and "harmony".

The Spanish government is preparing a major legal change to put an end to the high rate of temporary employment in the public sector. The Minister of Territorial Policy and Public Function, Miquel Iceta, announced on Thursday that the executive will reform the Basic Statute of the Public Employee (EBEP) to force all public administrations - including town and city councils - to fill positions that are currently occupied by temporary workers with permanent staff within a maximum period of three years. Staff with temporary contracts working directly for the State is around 8%, while it soars to 30% in the case of regional administrations. In the Generalitat, it reaches 32%. With the reform, the central government wants temporality to be kept under 8% in all public administrations.

Both vaccine doses have been administered to 35,943 people, which makes me surprised when I hear everyone is talking about the Illa effect: it doesn't seem to be supported by the data at a critical time, when vaccination is urgently needed. But I would like to talk about the Iceta effect. What will the metropolitan areas of Madrid and Barcelona be like in ten years' time? How will the recovery funds be used to position the network of Catalan municipalities within the system of European cities and regions? Does Barcelona have to be a small replica of the capital's model or will it have its own project? Will Madrid promote the transfer of productive sectors to Catalonia? Will it decentralise the civil service? Will Madrid continue to set Barcelona's global and tourist agenda or will it help to create a productive model based on science and knowledge? Will the State continue to promote a radial infrastructure model with the epicentre around Madrid? What specific plans will the new Catalan minister take to Madrid?

The Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) aspires to be on both sides of a future "negotiating table" that addresses the Catalan question. This is the spirit of the move that has led the hitherto Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, to resign from office in the midst of the pandemic to become the party's candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat in the most atypical elections since the recovery of democracy, and which, in parallel, has placed Miquel Iceta as Minister of Territorial Policy and Public Function with the obvious task of piloting the difficult Catalan portfolio. This is a move designed by Iceta himself with the essential endorsement of Pedro Sánchez. The Spanish president owes a lot to the Catalan socialist leader, who supported him when he was at his weakest within the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE). And Sánchez has bought into Iceta's dual strategy of reducing tension in Catalonia and seeking a way to break the hegemony of independence in the Catalan parliament and society. The same idea of pardons for political prisoners, launched three years ago by Iceta without being entrusted to the central party, has finally been adopted by the Spanish president as well. But in all this strategic game, Sánchez also plays his own cards: for some time now he has been looking for a replacement in Catalan socialism that would allow him to control the PSC even more firmly, by placing people who owe him direct loyalty

Those close to Miquel Iceta (Barcelona, 1960) say he had been feeling discouraged for months. After forty years of struggling through the ups and downs of politics, the Independence bid and the lack of direction of a divided government, as well as the degradation of the institutions that he often attributes to the pro-independence movement, he was close to exhaustion, but also to the frustration of not having managed to build an alternative that was sufficiently attractive in the eyes of the Catalans. "The day he detects that a person can do it better, he will leave", repeated a leader very close to him in recent years. And he has done so. By giving Salvador Illa the chance to preside over the Generalitat, the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) leader renounces one of his personal objectives and, in the medium term, failitates transition in the party. In exchange, he received a ticket for Madrid to become a minister, one of the few roles that, despite always being among the favourites, he is yet play. Regardless of its official title (Territorial Policy and Civil Service), he will be the Catalonia Minister, and his objective, dialogue

What does Pedro Sanchez think about the fact that the election will most probably take place on the 14-F despite the worsening of the pandemic? Until now he had avoided taking a clear position on the matter, and decided to have other ministers speak for him, but this Saturday from Barcelona he has given an answer. The President of the Spanish Government does not accept delays and is calling for a vote on February 14. "The most important thing is to close a sterile cycle as soon as possible and to open a new period", he proclaimed. Sánchez does not want to wait until May 30th.