CATALAN ELECTIONS | Moncloa closes the door to Aragonès’ proposal for a referendum: “It is antagonistic to this Government”
“No and no”. Moncloa has flatly rejected the proposal for an agreed referendum presented this morning by the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès. The Government of Pedro Sánchez neither shares it nor gives it the status of a formal proposal due to the pre-electoral context in Catalonia, with elections called for next May 12. Executive sources call it “electoralist” and, therefore, they do not even want to go into detail or assess the fact that the legal path chosen is the framework of the Constitution. Through article 92, which allows a “consultative referendum of all citizens.”
The Government spokesperson, Pilar Alegría, has reduced the initiative to the character of an “approach made by different candidates” in view of the Catalan elections. “Aragonès’s position is his position and is not at all that of this Government or the majority in Catalan society,” she stressed. The Executive flatly rules out the possibility of agreeing to an independence consultation because “it goes against the policy we have been pursuing in recent years.” Along these lines, she has aligned herself with the message of the PSC candidate, Salvador Illa, regarding transversal proposals and reunion considering that they are those endorsed by the majority of Catalan society.
“The Government’s roadmap is that of unity, reunion and harmony,” the spokesperson countered at a press conference after the Council of Ministers. Dialogue and consensus, yes, but not initiatives that divide, has come to summarize for ignore any proposal regarding a consultation binary. A dialogue, in any case, that has given courage to continue negotiating with the Republicans and the rest of the investiture partners “the policies that we still have to approve” in the rest of the legislature. Hence, a turning point in its relationship with the independentists is ruled out, both due to the referendum proposal and due to the governability scenario that opens after the Catalan elections.
Alegría has referred to Aragonès at all times as a “candidate” and not as president of the Generalitat to highlight their arguments of electoralism. However, he has concluded after repeated questions from journalists on this issue that “we do not share this proposal at all”, considering it “antagonistic” to this Government because the position defended by the socialists ands “radically contrary”. A roadmap based on “coexistence”, where he included the amnesty law, and for which he also took the opportunity to question the supposed lack of alternatives for the PP in Catalonia. “We know about the PP what they don’t like for Catalonia, but what is their proposal,” he asked himself.
The consultation model chosen by Aragonès, after receiving this Tuesday a report from the Institut d’Estudis d’Autogovern, an organization dependent on the Generalitat, coincides with the one put on the table by Junts in the investiture agreement with the PSOE. The differences in terms of moving towards the field “of national recognition” between socialists and post-convergents made the document put black on white the differences in options of each formation. Junts opted for “the holding of a self-determination referendum on the political future of Catalonia protected by article 92 of the Constitution.” The PSOE, for its part, set the development of the Statute as its starting position. The deployment of the Estatut is precisely one of the pillars of the roadmap of the PSC candidate, Salvador Illa, in the Catalan elections.
legal framework
Aragonès has also proposed what the exact question of this vote should be: “Do you want Catalonia to be an independent state?. Regarding the legal path chosen, it is argued that article 92 of the Constitution establishes that “political decisions of special importance may be submitted to a consultative referendum of all citizens.” A referendum that should be “called by the King, through a proposal from the President of the Government and previously authorized by Congress.”
Since 2013, the Government has received at least four different reports that include up to seven different routes to call a referendum based on the legal framework in force in Spain. In fact, in 2014 there was already an expedition of Catalan politicians to Congress – among them Marta Rovira and Jordi Turull – who defended calling the 9-N consultation through this constitutional precept.
