Sánchez has made too many mistakes to ask anything of Puigdemont now

After the euphoria of the election night, PP and PSOE have woken up to reality. The PP dreams of being able to reconcile Vox with the PNV around them, an impossible idea. However, the fact is that the Socialists won’t be able to govern either, unless Junts allows it.

And Junts will certainly vote against a possible investiture of Feijóo. But everything indicates that they will also vote against a potential investiture of Pedro Sánchez, thus forcing a new round of elections. This is the most likely hypothesis, although in Madrid, some hope that Puigdemont’s party will end up bending due to fear of what others might say.

They fail to understand two things. The first is that no Spanish government can offer anything personal to President Puigdemont, who has never presented his exile as an individual decision but as a political action. If Sánchez wants Junts’ votes, he will have to put significant political changes on the table to democratically resolve the Catalan problem.

And here is the second thing they don’t understand or don’t want to understand: past mistakes matter and hurt. The Socialist Party has chosen the wrong side since 2017. Between democracy and repression, between politics and violence, the PSOE has always chosen repression and violence, and moreover, it has made this choice hand in hand with PP, Ciudadanos, and Vox. They are the ones who must rectify first.

Even so, it will be challenging for them, as the list of grievances is endless and has only grown recently. Just yesterday, MEP Clara Ponsatí was illegally arrested in Barcelona, and the Spanish prosecutor’s office requested the arrest of President Puigdemont and Toni Comin. And not long ago, the PSC and Sumar, in an unthinkable move, joined forces with the PP -yes: PP!- to steal the mayorship of Barcelona from Junts. Invoking the specter of danger to democracy and ideological coherence under these conditions has very little credibility.

In any case, the deadlock situation Spain is experiencing does not arise out of nothing; it is the result of the disastrous obstinacy of the PP and PSOE to refuse to accept the consequences of exercising democracy in Catalonia. Moreover, it is the obstinacy of the PP and PSOE to believe that in 21st-century Europe, such an enormous political problem as the Catalan one can be resolved with violence, repression, imprisonment, and exile.

This is the fundamental error that pursues Pedro Sánchez today, the consequence of these six years in which the PSOE has not been on the side of dialogue and democracy but on the side of imposition and authoritarianism.