The displeasure of Junts

Jordi Turull was right yesterday when, in response to questions from a journalist at a press conference to announce that he was withdrawing the vote of confidence, he disassociated Junts' method and negotiating results from those of ERC. And if you look at the small print, it seems clear that the PSOE has moved much more since Carles Puigdemont's people have conditioned it. But who goes into detail these days?

From partial pardons and saying that amnesty was impossible, to approving one, although it has yet to be fully implemented. From deputies being denied the right to speak for speaking Catalan in Congress, to making it official alongside Basque and Galician. From saying that the omnibus law was untouchable, to breaking it up.

The mediator's claim has been very timely for Sánchez and Puigdemont

And so we could continue listing a series of events that have shaken the board since Junts entered the equation of parliamentary arithmetic, thanks to an improbable electoral result that surprised the juntaires first and annoyed Pedro Sánchez first, who was living very peacefully with the partners he had until then. But that is not enough, neither for Puigdemont's people nor, above all, for the pro-independence voter.

That is the situation that Junts finds itself in, claiming to have granted another extension to the PSOE government, but in reality they are giving it to themselves because, if they break away, they would now suffer greatly in the event of early elections.

And since almost no one goes into the fine print (and this is the sad world we live in, but it is mostly like this in all registers and age groups), today, in the face of the Catalan voter who asks for calm after the storm and results in terms of progress in their daily lives, Junts is not portrayed as the great answer to their ills, but rather as a synonym for noise, fuss and, for the most sensitive, as an annoying “fly in the ointment”. For them, in this sense, Junts is not CiU.

In contrast, for the most pro-independence voter, Junts is not the party that was born as an electoral list, brandishing the torch of legitimacy for the institutions annulled by Article 155, with the slogan “Puigdemont, our president”. Because after a few years competing with ERC to see who was more pro-independence, and effectively beating Junqueras in that game in the eyes of many, Junts is now basically competing with ERC to see who can extract more concessions from the PSOE.

Hence the need for the extension that was announced yesterday in response to a very timely request from the international mediator, not only for Sánchez, but also for Junts. But neither the extension can be eternal, nor can it be the next in a series of them, nor can it end with diffuse or half-way progress. Because, if any of that happens, Junts will have gone from announcing two disappointments for Sánchez (the one he had when he overturned the omnibus law and the one he said yesterday that the president will have if important things do not happen soon), to having Puigdemont's people at the polls. And this could be in the eyes of everyone, in capital letters.