Barely 48 hours after the fugitive Carles Puigdemont assured again that Junts is going to veto Sánchez’s General State Budgets, the Secretary of Organization of the PSOE has arrived in Switzerland to, by order of the President of the Government, beg the former president of the Generalitat that the legislature does not overthrow him. Aware that not getting the budget law approved is, in practice, the demonstration that the Government does not have the confidence of the majority of Congress, Sánchez strives to redirect the deteriorated bridges with Puigdemont and avoid a failure of this size. Even less coinciding with the federal congress of the PSOE that the Moncloa tenant has designed to entrench himself at the head of the party.
The meeting abroad with Puigdemont had been considered certain for weeks. It has been no secret for a long time – PSOE sources openly acknowledged it – that Sánchez had commissioned his plumbers close a meeting with Puigdemont. The president of the Generalitat, the socialist Salvador Illa, is also looking for him. All that was needed was to know the day, time and place.
The meeting took place in Switzerland. A delegation from the PSOE and another from Junts participated, led by Santos Cerdán and Carles Puigdemont, respectively. On the socialist side, two acquaintances have attended, along with Cerdán plumbers of Sanchismo who have already participated in similar struggles: the Andalusians Juan Francisco Serrano and Eladio Garzón. Serrano is also a deputy in Congress.
The assignment with which Cerdán and his companions have landed in Switzerland is clear: please Puigdemont to recover the lost relationship between the socialists and the former president escaped. Sánchez depends on the votes of the seven Junts deputies in Congress to have a sufficient majority to guarantee governability. The successive parliamentary initiatives that the social-communist government coalition has seen knocked down in Parliament due to the vote against Junts are already abundant. Among them, the decision of Puigdemont’s party to overthrow the approval of the spending ceiling and the deficit path was heard, an essential prior step to bring to Congress a General State Budget law. And Puigdemont reiterated a couple of days ago, publicly, that they are going to maintain that vote against. It remains to be seen if this Friday’s meeting has changed his mind.
Relations between Sánchez and Puigdemont have broken down due to what the Junts leader considers intolerable breaches on the part of the PSOE. On the one hand, he has not managed to close an Amnesty Law that, in its application, would allow him to be completely exonerated from any criminal accusation by the processes –the Supreme Court does not accept amnesty for prevarication–; on the other, that the PSOE has allied with ERC to take over the new government of the Generalitat chaired by the socialist Salvador Illa.
