The Junts spokesperson’s phrase echoed throughout the chamber and caused a general murmur. “Maybe I should stop talking about time changes and start talking about the time of change,” Míriam Nogueras told the President of the Government during her question time in the control session. Pedro Sánchez did not want or did not know what to answer to a message that, due to the solemn tone of the deputy, sounded different from other times although deep down it contained the same threat as always from Carles Puigdemont’s men. That is, bringing down the Executive if its demands are not met.
The fact is that Nogueras once again achieved what his parliamentary group has already achieved for so many days throughout the legislature: that everyone tries to decrypt his political speech to know exactly if, at the umpteenth warning, this time Sánchez is facing a real ultimatum or it is just another bluff. “Today’s statement is not gratuitous. This is serious. We had never talked about change,” they say from Junts when asked about the background of the message conveyed today.
In reality, fulfilling the literality of that veiled threat of “change” would inevitably lead to the only real move that the seven Junts deputies in Congress have in their hands: joining their votes to the PP and Vox to support a motion of censure that ousts Pedro Sánchez from Moncloa. And there Puigdemont’s men lower the soufflé again. “We must follow the dotted line of what we have been denouncing and warning for weeks,” say parliamentary sources from the Catalan independentists regarding the non-compliance that they accuse the Government of. Although, regarding the motion of censure, they add: “We are not there yet.”
What they describe in Junts is a dead end legislature in which, from their point of view, they do not see the fulfillment of a single one of the commitments acquired by the PSOE. “The next few days will be important, next week we will see. The extension will not last the entire legislature, we already warned. As we are now it makes no sense to continue and the chewing gum no longer works. Either they change the way they do politics, or we change,” they warn.
In full electoral competition with the xenophobic Aliança Catalana, Junts for the first time does not focus on the application of the amnesty to Puigdemont or on the official status of Catalan in the European Union as priority issues pending to be finalized. The most urgent demands that they convey to the Government, however, have to do with its initiatives on “multiple recidivism, unrest” or on the delegation of immigration powers to the Generalitat. Precisely the ultra anti-immigration agenda for which it competes with Silvia Orriols’ party.
Questioned by the latest threat, the Government prefers to downplay the significance of “a ready-made phrase”, as a minister who made her own reading of Nogueras’ speech described the expression as “the time for change”. “It’s the usual Junts. They tend to raise their tone when they make their demands high. Let them explain to us what they want to say, but it’s a play on words to which we don’t give greater drama.” Another of the ministers closest to the president expressed himself along the same lines. “They have managed to sneak their phrase into the news. We continue.”
The truth is that the tone and substance of Míriam Nogueras’s intervention this Wednesday in Congress has been indistinguishable from that of opposition groups such as the PP and Vox, with the most explicit attacks on the PSOE that can be remembered in the parliamentary headquarters of some supposed legislative partners. “Many people are fed up with not making ends meet while they see that their taxes do not put an end to the torture of Renfe, or to building businesses, or to facilitating access to housing, but rather they are going to pay ransoms for the flotilla, the illegal financing of parties, prostitution, parties or the financing of media outlets,” he said.
“We are going to make the decisions we have to make and I ask the PSOE what they are going to do: Are they going to block, continue telling stories or start working?” he exclaimed after remembering that Junts is the only party that in its investiture agreement did not accept the stability clause of the Government, but that this “would depend on the materialization of the agreements.”
In this context, he has insisted that “people are fed up” with the problems not being solved, pointing out crime in the streets as such because the Law proposed by Junts against multiple recidivism remains blocked; the occupation of apartments because the law against occupations is also blocked; the situation of the self-employed or the delays in the trains.
Source: www.eldiario.es
