With a legislature and a Socialist Executive in its final stages due to the corruption that the Peugeot Clan has injected into the system to exploit it, Pedro Sánchez has made a final, radical move to retain the support of nationalism: the proposal to transform the autonomous state into a confederation. A long-term and difficult political commitment, with which the man with the made-up face offers friendly nationalism the opportunity to empty the state of its substance and powers. And in the process, weaken the institutional and economic power of that liberal Madrid with which Sánchez and the Catalan oligarchy are obsessed and trying to subjugate.
It is, in a way, a second chance to bring about that"plural Spain" with which José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero sought to put an end to the "regime of '78," by promoting a Statute in 2006 that enshrined new areas of political, fiscal, and legal sovereignty for Catalonia. This, according to the PSOE, was aborted by the political and judicial right in Madrid through a ruling by the Constitutional Court. Sánchez's current proposal has the same damaging effects on solidarity among Spaniards that the still-current constitutional pact inspires.
The document signed this Monday in Barcelona between the Government and the Generalitat (Catalan government) is a solemn declaration of intent, right from the Sánchez administration. It doesn't provide figures, nor does it detail a new financing system, nor does it explain how it will be implemented—a cause for criticism from ERC and Junts (Junts)—but it does clearly express the Government's political will to take a definitive step toward the confederal model, blowing up the Spanish Treasury's common coffers. This demand was put forward by Oriol Junqueras both to appoint Salvador Illa as president of the Generalitat (Catalan government) and to keep Sánchez in La Moncloa.
The collection and management of funds has always been at the heart of the historical struggle between the Madrid (formerly Castilian) and Barcelona elites, seeking to ensure that Catalonia would not be economically and politically inferior to the Basque Country or Navarre. This aspiration has led to periodic outbreaks of disobedience, such as the"tancament de caixes" (the tax lock) of 1899—when merchants and industrialists closed their businesses to stop paying taxes after the increase decreed by Minister Fernández Villaverde—or the coup d'état of 2017. There have also been periods of tactical calculation, such as the early years of democracy, with Jordi Pujol at the head of the Generalitat (Catalan government), when Catalonia rejected an economic agreement, considering it more advantageous to negotiate its resources directly with the governments in power, taking advantage of the parliamentary strength of CiU (CiU) in Madrid.
The failure of the independence process and the loss of institutional power despite the pardons and amnesty has led the independence movement to embrace the economic agreement as a viable option. A need to showcase results and pragmatism to its electorate, in which the PSOE leader has seen an opportunity to revive a Popular Front with nationalists and the far left. Sánchez's"Estatut moment," in which he links his resistance in the Moncloa and his reelection as president to a radical change in the state model.
The PSOE's message for the remainder of this legislative term and the upcoming election campaign is already defined: either the survival of a plural and free Spain under Sánchez, or authoritarian recentralization and a return to a Francoist Spain with a government of the PP and Vox.
