In March 2007, 19 years ago, hundreds of representatives of the so-called Catalan civil society filled the Iese to the brim in an event that became a true claim for the need to bring the management of a key infrastructure such as Barcelona airport closer to the territory. Almost two decades have passed since then and the issue, which has been resurfacing over the years, is back on the table, now with a public-private centralized operator, Aena. Issues that have been raised for a long time have not yet been resolved, such as the accounts of each of the airports in the network – they are presented as a whole, without detailing the parts that make them up or what some gain and others lose, or which ones subsidize the others, etc.

A year ago, the plan to pick up Carles Puigdemont and return him was a resounding success. The Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police), who hadn't anticipated that the former president would not show up at the Parliament for Salvador Illa's investiture after his speech at the Arc de Triomf, were unable to arrest him. But one image nearly ruined the escape of the Junts leader on that sweltering August 8th. It was the one taken by Maria, who prefers to remain anonymous, aware that the photograph she took with her cell phone could have thwarted a carefully designed plan to avoid his arrest.

It has taken him three votes, but finally Pere Aragonès has been invested as 132nd president president of the Generalitat with 74 votes in favour. A figure that places him directly on the podium of the presidents with more parliamentary support. Not even two months ago, the ERC candidate beat the record in reverse: he became the presidential candidate with the fewest votes in favour in history, 42.

This Friday's investiture debate in the Parliament had a certain historical flavour: Catalonia once again has an ERC president. The party was hegemonic during the Republic with Macià and Companys, kept alive the flame of the Generalitat in exile with Irla and Tarradellas, barely survived the Transition and, starting from a minority position in relation to CiU and PSC, now returns to hold the leadership of the main institution of the country. The embrace between the president of the party, Oriol Junqueras, and the now president of the country, Pere Aragonès, summed up the complexity of the moment, with the former in prison as a result of the events around the 2017 referendum and the latter becoming the first president born after the death of Franco.

Pere Aragonès is already the 132nd president of the Generalitat. 80 years later, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya returns to have the presidency of the first institution of the country after the plenary of the Parliament has invested Aragonès with 74 votes in favour -those of ERC, Junts and CUP- and 61 against. The Republican candidate will still have to wear the label of president-elect until Monday's inauguration to solemnise his new position, but in the corridors of the Catalan chamber - with the leader of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, as a direct witness thanks to a prison leave - one could breathe the atmosphere of change. Behind is a tortuous negotiation with Junts per Catalunya and a handful of wounds. Ahead, a new mandate.

Neither Pere Aragonès (ERC) nor Salvador Illa (PSC) renounced their political positions on Thursday, but the good tone of the exchange they maintained in the investiture debate is an indication that a new political stage in Catalonia may begin today. Obviously, the political conflict with the State is still very much alive and nothing suggests a solution in the short term, but at least it seems that Parliament can leave behind the tension and demagogy that Ciutadans imposed during its five years with Inés Arrimadas as leader of the opposition. Salvador Illa made it clear that he does not share the pro-independence project and that he will firmly oppose it, but he also offered Aragonès collaboration in key aspects such as the fight against the pandemic and European funds.

Pere Aragonès will be elected 132nd president of the Generalitat this Friday. Before, however, he has to stand as a presidential candidate in parliament once again. This time, though, he has secured the votes of JxCat and CUP to win. Reassured, ERC's candidate has again spoken of "inevitably culminating" independence, but has specified his methods are not unilateral. He will not seek to repeat the 2017 events. Aragonès believes the Scottish way is the best: dialogue, political negotiation with the State and agreed referendum. "I want to do as Scotland did in 2014 and I would like the Spanish state to know how to do as the United Kingdom did", he concluded, recalling that agreed referendum, which the Scots lost then and which they now want to hold again

Three months have passed since the Catalans decided at the polls the new correlation of forces in Parliament. Despite the fact that the elections left a renewed political landscape - PSC won, Cs collapsed and ERC overtook JxCat - nothing has changed substantially. The negotiations for the investiture between the pro-independence parties have been blocked since last Saturday and the time to reach an agreement is running out. There are 12 days left until the Parliament is automatically dissolved if a president cannot be invested. In this final stretch, the mess will be resolved with one of these four scenarios.

When JxCat and ERC reach an agreement to unblock the investiture -if they reach do- the Generalitat's own musical chairs will begin. There are almost 500 people who depend directly on the parties, from general secretaries, secretaries, secretaries, advisers, general directors, members of the cabinets, delegates and a good handful of managers of public companies. Even general subdirectors -who must be civil servants- may change because they are also freely designated positions. This means an expense of almost €40m per year depending on the formation of a new government. The changes would be especially profound if ERC ends up governing alone, but it is a question that is repeated every time there are elections. Can an administration function if it has to completely redefine its entire management every time there are elections?

Junts' warning to Esquerra the day after the Republicans considered the negotiations for a coalition government to be broken and proposed forming an executive on their own. This Sunday, the vice-president of Junts, Elsa Artadi, has not guaranteed the votes of her party to the ERC candidate, Pere Aragonès, and has warned Oriol Junqueras' party that it will be necessary for them to remain at the table and negotiate in this new scenario. "If ERC now wants to move from a legislature agreement to just an investiture agreement, this has to be negotiated and this agreement has to go through the grassroots of our party", Artadi said this Sunday on Catalunya Ràdio and RAC1. "Junts has never said it will give away free votes to Aragonès", she warned.

The secretary general of Junts per Catalunya, Jordi Sànchez, has responded this Saturday to ERC's announcement to explore the path of the solitary government by offering an extended hand to continue negotiating a coalition government. Without concealing his surprise at the appearance of the vice-president of the Govern and national coordinator of the Republicans, Pere Aragonès, Sànchez has assured that his formation will continue working to reach an agreement before the deadline of 26 May. "There are 18 days left, but our agreement is close. There are no excuses. It is not normal to give up the possibility of a strategic agreement", warned the leader of Junts, who has denied that his formation wants to impose "tutelage" on Aragonès.

83 days after the elections, Esquerra has taken this Saturday the step that had been meditated for weeks in the engine room of the Republicans: to take up the gauntlet of Junts per Catalunya and run to govern in minority. This was announced this Saturday at a press conference by the national coordinator of ERC and vice-president of the government, Pere Aragonès, in view of the deadlock in negotiations between the Republicans and Junts per Catalunya. "It has been impossible to move forward to a definitive agreement", Aragonès lamented, stressing that the stumbling blocks have been the same since the beginning. "Given the lack of understanding and the fundamental disagreements, the best option for the country is to accept Junts' offer at the start of the negotiations, which was reiterated yesterday by its secretary general at a press conference", Aragonès pointed out.

For the time being, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) has ruled out trying to form a government alone. It was an idea that had been maturing for weeks due to the lack of progress in negotiations with Together for Catalonia (JxCat), but which the party finally discarded. Saturday marked the deadline ERC had set for an agreement, yet their joint General Secretary Marta Vilalta justified continuing efforts to form a coalition government by alluding to a "turning point" in talks with JxCat.

ERC and JxCat arrived at the meeting this Tuesday in Lledoners to try to uncork the investiture knowing that it was not the definitive one. Given this fact, the summit had to become, above all, a thermometer of the state of the talks. Once held, the main conclusion is that the negotiation breathes after two months without much progress and a dynamic of latent criticism between both parties. There are no agreements yet, it is true, but at least the two partners have made an effort to try to convey that there has been a good atmosphere. All this can be deduced from the small details of Tuesday's contact.

Junts shakes the negotiations with ERC and warns that if the republicans prefer to govern with the CUP and the comuns, they will not be an obstacle: "We will vote for them if this is what they choose" were the words of the secretary general of JxCat, Jordi Sànchez, in an interview in La Vanguardia. That is to say, they are open to facilitate the investiture of Pere Aragonès and move to the opposition. Sources of Junts point out that raising this possibility is a direct reaction to the last declarations of ERC in the sense that the pact with the CUP "will not be touched". This is how Republican MPs Sergi Sabrià and Marta Vilalta protected it in statements to Efe and Europa Press, and this forcefulness has created discomfort in the ranks of the party of Carles Puigdemont. The vice-president of Junts, Elsa Artadi, affirms in an interview in the ARA that the agreement of the CUP and ERC does not "question" them. She defines as "nuclear" for her party elements such as public-private collaboration, when the pact of the Republicans with the anti-system is committed to changing semi-private schools to public ones, or creating public energy. This Sunday Vilalta has insisted on the fact that the agreement with the cupaires is untouchable: "The CUP does not have to fear anything, it is an agreement and agreements are fulfilled".

The CUP has not closed the door to enter the new Government but neither has it taken steps to demonstrate that it wants to be part of it. What the names of the ministers will be and what the programme of the incoming executive will be like will remain unknown as long as Junts and ERC do not reach an agreement, but it is also unknown whether the CUP will be present. Right now, the anti-establishment party does not have it on the table, but "in a few days" it could be debated, in the words of CUP MP Eulàlia Reguant in an interview with Europa Press. They run the risk, however, that in a few days the cat will be out of the bag and Junts and ERC will have already agreed on the new government. Even so, the CUP is keeping the door open to joining: Reguant pointed out that depending on how the pact with the Republicans evolves, they could consider having a seat in the executive with the legislature already underway. In other words, they could enter the Government in the middle of the term.

"The agreement with the CUP is not to be changed". This is the message that ERC MP and member of the negotiating team for the investiture, Sergi Sabrià, has launched to JxCat this Thursday. The tension between the two parties is once again palpable, after ERC candidate for the investiture, Pere Aragonès, did not receive JxCat's support in the last session and became the least voted candidate (with 42 votes in favor) since the restitution of the Parliament. ERC was critical in the debate with this decision, since they consider that the differences between the parties are not insurmountable, while JxCat (which abstained) reproached ERC for having started talks with CUP first, although it is the role and composition of the Consell per la República that has been the main stumbling block of the negotiations.

A day before the second investiture debate, the Consell per la República (CxR) has made a move: it offers to reformulate its governance to include the strategic direction of the Independence bid. Through a press statement, CxR assures that it has to be the "republican institution from which strategies have to be agreed on to make effective what we committed ourselves to after the result of the referendum", but it agrees with ERC and the CUP -who are suspicious of CxR- that "modifications" have to be made in its functioning.

Junts per Catalunya (JxCat) will again opt for abstention in the second debate on the investiture of Pere Aragonès. According to several sources, the executive of the party has dealt with it this morning in a meeting with representatives of the parliamentary group, since, after the conversations with Esquerra Republicana (ERC) over the weekend, they have not yet closed an agreement. Even so, they do believe that "with more time" Aragonès's investiture will be agreed on.

During the election campaign, ERC and Junts constantly promised that the new Government would be based on new foundations, that the broken trusts would be rebuilt and that they had learned their lesson so as to not repeat the mess of the last legislature. Elections, moreover, had been on the horizon ever since the then president Quim Torra assumed the legislature had ended in December 2020, although it was his disqualification that finally caused the electoral advance, and everyone took for granted that ERC and JxCat would have to agree again. Even so, these two parties have been unable to close a pact quickly, so the first attempt at investiture this Friday in the Parliament has failed, and Pere Aragonès has not gathered enough votes.