Pedro Sánchez and Pere Aragonès telephoned at the end of October to definitively put the agreement on the investiture pact on track. Once this is effective, they already have a date to see each other face to face. As La Vanguardia has learned, it will be on December 21 at the Palau de la Generalitat. Aragonès wants to address different issues and one of them will be to resume the dialogue table between the Spanish and Catalan governments to resolve the political conflict. The last staging of this space was in July 2022.
Sánchez and Aragonès met for the last time at Moncloa on July 15 of last year. In Palau, on September 15, 2021. Even so, the two leaders have not lost contact. They gave a push to an investiture pact that was marked by the amnesty. They agreed to it in three groups: PSOE, ERC and Junts. But the Republicans included other aspects that deserve as much consideration as the criminal forgetfulness law. The transfer of Rodalies or the removal of 15,000 million debt are two of the most notable. Aragonès wants to address these issues at the meeting in Palau.
ERC and the Government have repeatedly warned that the approval of the amnesty – once the procedures have been completed in Congress and the Senate, it could be a fact in April 2024 – is not an end. Those of Oriol Junqueras insist on seeking solutions and demand that steps be taken to call a self-determination referendum. Aragonès’s desire is for the rules of the game to be agreed upon during this Spanish legislature, without this necessarily implying that it be held during this period. The Republicans have indicated that they will present the clarity agreement on the table, still in the process of being drafted.
In any case, it will be a “work meeting,” according to sources familiar with the meeting. In addition to Rodalies, the Catalan president wants to monitor compliance with the pacts. The current and the past. The Esquerra Government intends to account for a whole series of issues that have not been completed and that have been dealt with in bilateral commissions. The appointment will serve to try to launch the corresponding spaces as soon as possible.
But there is one issue in which Aragonès is going to put all his efforts. The head of the Government demands “singular financing” for Catalonia. It is not an aspect that was agreed upon in the framework of the negotiations to invest Sánchez, but the president wants to take advantage of the arithmetic of Congress, with the PSOE and Sumar tied to maintain the legislature to the groups that allowed Sánchez’s re-election as president of the Government.
In this sense, Aragonès commissioned the Minister of Economy, Natàlia Mas, to prepare a proposal for its own financing in which Catalonia collects all its taxes “to end the fiscal deficit”, which the Department estimated at 22,000 million euros alone. in 2021. Likewise, Mas has the task of proposing mechanisms to ensure compliance with the investments committed by the State to Catalonia.
