Chacón told to toe Catalan Socialist line or look for a new party

The rift between former Defense Minister Carme Chacón and the leader of the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) became more evident on Thursday when Pere Navarro said that she would not have the backing of the regional grouping if she intends to run for prime minister in the next general elections.

Navarro, the PSC first secretary, explained to Efe that the party cannot consider supporting Chacón, a member of the regional Socialist party, because she abstained from voting on a measure to begin drafting an enabling law to hold a vote next year on self-rule for Catalonia.

“It is evident that the candidate that we should elect, when the time comes, must accept and defend the PSC’s election platform, and we are committed to defending the people’s right to vote in a referendum as a democratic principle,” Navarro said.

Chacón angered many inside the PSC on Tuesday by abstaining. Navarro and 12 other PSC members broke ranks with the national party and sided with the Catalan nationalist CiU bloc and other pro-independence parties in favor of a petition that calls for the regional government in Barcelona to begin negotiations with Madrid over next year’s planned referendum.

We are committed to the referendum as a democratic principle”

Pere Navarro

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has said that holding a vote on Catalonia’s status is illegal because it hasn’t been approved by Congress.

Meanwhile, the national Socialist Party (PSOE) has decided to fine the 14 deputies, including Chacón, 600 euros each for disobeying orders and not voting against the CiU-backed measure. At the same time, the only PSC representative on the Socialist management group in Congress, José Zaragoza, stepped down from that post.

It was the first time in three decades that the PSC has not been represented on the congressional steering committee, according to the bench’s spokesman.

According to the sources, PSOE leader Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba accepted Zaragoza’s resignation after the party’s national executive committee had made strong suggestions to the PSC man that he should withdraw from his senior role.

Navarro said that next Monday, when members of the PSC and PSOE get together to hammer out a new pact between the mother organization and its Catalan affiliate, they will demand that Zaragoza be welcomed back to the management group in Congress. Zaragoza has been in the news over recent weeks after his name surfaced as the mastermind of a spying operation by the now-defunct Método 3 detective agency against Alicia Sánchez-Camacho, the head of the Popular Party in Catalonia, and the former girlfriend of the son of ex-regional premier Jordi Pujol. Zaragoza, who was head of the PSC at the time that detectives recorded a lunch meeting between the two women in July 2010, has denied the allegations.

That case is under a judicial investigation.