The Catalan president, Pere Aragonès (ERC), has saved this Monday his Budgets for 2022 for Catalonia without the support of the CUP and thanks to pre-agreement ‘in extremis’ that has been reached with the ‘commons’ but JxCat, your coalition partner, has already made it clear that it is not going to come for free. “Altering the majority of the investiture” will have “consequences”, has warned him, and has asked for an emergency meeting “to find out what happens” and what is the path of “the legislature of 52%.”
The debate and vote in the Parliament this Monday of amendments to the entire budget It has put the independence movement to the test, which has not passed the test jointly. The CUP has not yielded a millimeter and has maintained the amendment which he presented last week despite the fact that he had opened to negotiate.
Yes he has ended up doing it In common, despite the rivalry that it maintains with the ‘post-convergent’ part of the Government, whom it has come to reproach on multiple occasions for its “xenophobia” with a part of the Catalans and their right-wing policies. The ‘commons’ have decided this Monday to withdraw their amendment and support the accounts of the Generalitat if ERC did the same with those of the Ada Colau government for Barcelona.
At 8.30 This Monday the Government met urgently after a weekend in which the negotiations had been stalled. At that time, Aragonès has presented to its partners the agreement reached with the ‘commons’. An announcement that has thus confirmed the fears of JxCat, which had already shown its misgivings and concern at a first meeting between ERC and En Comú this Sunday.
At a press conference four hours later, Aragonès has shown his thanks to the work of the Junts councilors and has assured that they had “Welcomed” the possibility of approving the Catalan budgets, thanks to the agreement reached by ERC with the commons. All the councilors, he said, “have positively received the possibility that the budgets are approved on January 1. “And it has been shown “Convinced” that its partners would be “up to par” and they would not block the public accounts in the vote in the Parliament.
Junts, to Aragonès: “Altering the majority of the investiture will have consequences”
Until that hour, Junts had chosen to remain silent. However, shortly after Aragonès, he held his own press conference. Its spokesperson, Elsa Artadi, has reproached the ‘president’ for having “Abandoned the independence majority” to agree with En Comú the Budgets, something that “Must have consequences”. And it is that Together responsible to Aragonese of the “Independence failure” This is confirmed this Monday, since it is not “the Government” who makes a pact with the ‘commons’, but ERC.
For Together, Aragonés “is the head of the legislature of the 52%, due to the agreements that made him president six months ago “for the inauguration. And what happened this Monday derives, according to the party, in the need to review the investiture agreement and how is the health of that “majority of 52%”Of the pro-independence vote of the last elections of February 14. However, Artadi has recognized that his training would support the Budgets, since he was not altered by the ERC pact with the ‘commons’.
His critical tone has been later lowered in the plenary session of the Parliament, where the Minister of Economy, Jaume Giró, has appealed directly to the CUP and also to the PSC to do like the ‘commons’ and facilitate the processing of the accounts by withdrawing their amendments to the entirety. Without explicitly referring to the agreement between ERC and the CUP, he did celebrate that the Budgets “can move forward and enter into force next January.”
Nevertheless, has regretted that it has not been achieved “Get these budgets to have prospered with the pro-independence majority “. “It could not be,” he said, so his “satisfaction today is not complete.” In spite of everything, he has said that what happened does not “weaken” sovereign aspirations of the Government and has been convinced that the “strategic unity” of the independence movement will be recovered.
The CUP asks the Government to stop “tripping” and charges against JxCat
In the same debate, The CUP has asked the Govern parties that they do not use their training or the investiture agreement “to trip between them, as they have done all their lives, “or to” externalize their problems. “
Deputy Eulàlia Reguant has shown up very critical of Junts by ensuring that “whoever abandons 52% is the one who agrees from behind the expansion of the airport or who defends the interests of some employers that opposed the referendum of 1-O “. And it has been against some Budgets that, according to the formation, do not correspond to the investiture pact since they are some Budgets” of speculative “macroprojects” and of massive “tourism”.
“We have tried and will continue working until the last minute so that these Budgets respond to a common horizon of social and national change, but until now we have not seen the will of a change in trend “, has affirmed lReguant, who has criticized: “We had agreed on a starting point but they have not wanted to give way towards a shared national and social horizon, and the Government has suspended the first semester with its sociovergent policies”.
The ‘commons’: “Budgets are not about independence or not”
In the midst of these tensions, the leader of En Comú in Parliament, Jessica Albiach, has stressed that the agreement with ERC is a “pre-agreement” to facilitate the processing of accounts, although his intention is that from here he can continue negotiating to “improve” them until December 23, when the final vote is scheduled.
“We have always said: the budgets were not independentists or non-independentists “Albiach stressed, who thanked ERC for “moving” from its initial position, which was to prioritize a pact with the CUP, and for placing itself “on the side of the general interest.”
After the vote on Monday, the Government has room not only to seek the necessary support to definitively approve the Budgets, but to redirect that pro-independence majority to which it appeals. Nevertheless, Budgets add to a long list of crashes among the partners of the Catalan Executive in just six months of the legislature, such as the dialogue table with the central government or the sounded fiasco of the El Prat expansion plan (finally suspended).
A legislature that, on the other hand, has already begun with the suspicion of JxCat and the CUP of Esquerra’s independence strategy. So much so, that Aragonès committed to the anti-capitalists to submit to a question of confidence in 2023 to evaluate the success or failure of the path of dialogue with the State. But for that, there are still almost two long years left.
www.rtve.es
