The fact that ERC has not presented any amendments to the state budget in its entirety will allow them to be processed. It is a first step towards an understanding with the PSOE on a key issue: guaranteeing a quota for the presence of Catalan on digital platforms for audiovisual content. Republicans and socialists have agreed to jointly approve the new audiovisual law and protect the co-official languages, although for now no percentage has been specified.

Whether it is families debating where to go on holiday, or presidents discussing a peace deal, negotiation is a critical and frequently misunderstood part of our lives, and the natural biproduct of conflict. Managing – rather than eradicating – that conflict can define the difference between war and peace, prosperity and stagnation. Most of us are risk and negotiation adverse. This aversion is strangely pronounced when it comes to gaining something.  Greece and Northern Macedonia took 25 years to reach agreement on the country’s name for that reason. Essentially, we aren’t ready to invest as much political will into gaining something positive, as we are to avoiding something negative (loss of territory, pride, resources). As negotiators across Spain approach a period of crucial talks over their future legal arrangements, it is worth looking at some principles of good negotiation and how we might avoid the mistakes of the past.  

Negotiations to form a government continue to run aground despite ERC's pressure on JxCat to speed up the agreement. This Saturday marked the expiry of the deadline which, in an interview with ARA, presidential candidate Pere Aragonès set before ERC raised "alternative options", such as a solo minority government. Recall that it was secretary general of JxCat, Jordi Sànchez, who floated this possibility, not ERC. But the fact is that ERC, despite setting deadlines in an attempt to push the negotiation forward, does not dare to play this card clearly.

In the face of covid-19, the social and economic crisis it has provoked, and the deadlock of the conflict with the State, the elections to the Catalan Parliament on 14 February presented us with a historic opportunity to transform the country; to confront with determination the social emergencies that we are suffering and that the pandemic has aggravated; to promote an economic reconstruction aimed at laying the foundations of a new productive model that measures its strength in terms of prosperity and well-being for everyone; and to take advantage of all the strength that comes from having received over 50% of the votes for the first time to defend the Catalan Republic as never before, to obtain amnesty and self-determination inevitable.