Moncloa has celebrated the result of the first meeting of the dialogue table between the national government and the Catalan regional government. A dialogue table to which both participants attend with different objectives. While the Executive, or at least the socialist part of it, intends to regain institutional normality with it, the independence movement (and Podemos) seeks an agreed independence referendum and amnesty for the leaders of the process.
It was enough to observe the gesture of Pedro Sanchez after his visit to the Palace of the Generalitat to verify that if there has been someone who can boast of having amortized his presence at the dialogue table, that is him. The president has applied to the independence movement the old maxim of “divide and conquer” and the result has been, effectively, the division of independence and the victory of Sánchez.
If something has been clear, beyond the opinion that one has of the very existence of a dialogue table in which unconstitutional objectives are proposed and that if consummated they would seriously attack the rights of Spanish citizens, it is that Sánchez has reasons for that satisfaction. As sources from Moncloa have stated to EL ESPAÑOL, the independence movement is today “disarmed.”
Disarmed, yes. And also divided, frustrated and without much hope of one day getting his long-awaited independence referendum. Proof of this is the demobilization of separatism, the failure of the last Diada assistance and the confusion of JxCAT, which launched a few hours before the meeting of the table an order that it could not sustain due to lack of real political, institutional and social strength. .
On siding
The process is on the sidings. It is true that separatism had already been defeated by reality (the prison had an evident pedagogical effect on its leaders, and the proof is that Roger Torrent that, as President of Parliament, he never dared to cross the line of legality as his predecessor had done Carme Forcadell).
But it is also true that the dialogue table is a new proof of the impotence of a separatism whose greatest weapon today, wielded over and over again by Gabriel Rufián, is the threat of not approving the Government’s Budgets.
To this victory of the State it is necessary to add a second. How quickly Pere Aragonès, who received the Prime Minister with what seemed like a regional simulation of a reception with State honors, has taken on Sánchez’s arguments. And among them, that dialogue should not have deadlines. A statement that is anathema to the hyperventilated sector of Catalan secessionism and that ERC now defends with the faith of the convert to autonomism.
Beyond the gestures, provocative but inane (such as removing the Spanish flag when the pro-independence representatives spoke in front of the press), the reality remains.
And the reality is that the Government has not committed to anything and that all it has done is kick forward the corpse of the process in a kind of magnanimous concession to ERC: Since it is unable to recognize in front of its voters that independence will never come, Sánchez has granted at least the most credulous of separatists the fantasy of a dead-born dialogue table.
Dead end maze
It is also true that the mere existence of a dialogue table in which unconstitutional proposals are on the table supposes an unacceptable cession of the Government. As it is that the meeting is conceptually absurd because it puts at the same level, at least from an aesthetic point of view, to the Government of the Nation and to a simple regional administration hierarchically subject to this.
But it is also true that Sánchez can argue that today’s secessionism, without a political pulse and without a project for the future, is less threatening than that of 2017. It is a matter of debate whether that meekness would have also occurred without the need to pardon the coup plotters of the process. But the reality is what it is: the State, and Sánchez as a member of it, has defeated separatism.
The open gap between ERC and JxCAT, which was manifested in its maximum expression with the exclusion of the party of Carles Puigdemont of the table, it is also the best ally for the interests of the Government. But it cannot be overlooked that the process will be long and that many questions remain to be answered. Among them, the meaning of a dialogue table that only involves PSOE, Podemos and ERC.
The dialogue table, in short, has already taken effect. The effect of further dividing a nationalism still trapped in his own dead-end labyrinth.
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Reference-www.elespanol.com