In recent years, the ERC has targeted the PSC as number one of its reprimands. Today Pere Aragonès has laid the first stone for Carles Puigdemont to share the criticism. The figure of the former president, since he settled in Belgium, has generally been treated without disregard. But elections are approaching and the head of the Government has chosen to go on the attack. “He only talks about himself,” he said of Puigdemont, while at the same time disgracing him for denying him the debates that he requested.
Aragonès, in a colloquium organized by La Vanguardia, AED and the Barcelonesa Economic Society of Friends of the Country, chaired by Miquel Roca, at the Hotel Melià Sarrià in Barcelona, ??one month before the Catalan elections on May 12, tried to point out the contradiction that supposes, in his opinion, that Puigdemont claims unity when Junts abandoned the Government in October 2022. “Unity is demonstrated with facts,” he stressed.
The president of the Generalitat has assured that Junts has no proposals, and has even criticized that it does not support or does not have a developed proposal so that Catalonia has its own financing, with which it can collect all its taxes.
It contrasts, in Aragonès’ opinion, with the proactive activity that has been shown after Holy Week. On the table he places the request for a referendum agreed through article 92 of the Constitution, the creation of a department dedicated exclusively to the Catalan language or unique financing for Catalonia. Today he has considered that the current model, together with the fiscal deficit of 22,000 million euros that the Department of Economy calculated, is “an unbearable, obsolete, opaque and unfair slab.”
On this point, he has also criticized Salvador Illa, who recently defended a financing system “without any type of privilege for anyone.” “Someone tells us that it is a privilege, unheard of. Is having resources so that schools and hospitals can increase a privilege?” He asked himself. For Aragonès, ending the fiscal deficit is an obligation “for anyone who is willing to preside over the country.” The president explained that Catalonia would have around 52 billion euros at its disposal, “double what we have today.”
Likewise, the national coordinator of ERC has also demanded a one-on-one relationship with Pedro Sánchez. He has considered that this is how Catalonia has advanced. As an example, he has given the reduction of the debt of 15,000 million from the Autonomous Liquidity Fund (FLA) that Esquerra negotiated for the investiture of Sánchez as President of the Government, or the transfer of the minimum vital income (IMV) or Rodalies.
“Catalonia of 8 million [inhabitants] cannot be managed with the resources for 6 million,” Aragonès claimed, referring to one of the slogans launched during Jordi Pujol’s presidency. According to the Republican, if Catalonia does not have all the resources it generates “it will soon hit its ceiling.”
