The optimism that Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz exhibited on Tuesday during the signing of the PSOE-Sumar investiture agreement is not shared in the pro-independence ranks. There is no mention of Catalonia in the entire 48-page document, not even about the Catalan question. “The negotiation is green” is an expression of warning that the Minister of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrà, launched last week regarding the transfer of Rodalies and the fiscal deficit. But the amnesty file is not going well either: as La Vanguardia has learned, the Republicans reject the PSOE’s proposal to include concepts such as “reconciliation” and “coexistence” in the explanatory memorandum of the amnesty law. That it is not spoken in these terms is important for ERC, but the party considers it even more crucial that the text does not assume that the 1-O referendum was a crime.
Junts maintains its side with the PSOE in the negotiation for this law of criminal oblivion, with concepts such as “national minority” outside the norm that have been put on the table and that Esquerra has rejected. The Republicans settle the issue with a single phrase: “Catalonia is a nation.” Those of Oriol Junqueras are holding parallel conversations about the amnesty that at the moment do not satisfy them. For ERC, 1-O was not a crime, which is why they reject any mention in this regard in the preamble of a future law that is key to Sánchez’s investiture.
It is nuclear, for Esquerra. The PSOE is clear that an exculpation of the October 2017 referendum would favor the Constitutional Court overturning the rule. The negotiation is not going well, but it continues despite the fact that Junqueras has assured today in his meeting with the former president of Sinn Féin Gerry Adams in Belfast that Sánchez “does nothing” to reach an agreement for the investiture.
Regarding the second folder that is being set as a condition for the investiture, that of progress in self-determination, PSOE and ERC are trying to specify the arc of what can be exposed in a resumption of the dialogue table that the two parties signed in 2019 ERC wants it to once again be a table at which exclusively the two governments engage in conversations. The participation of the parties and a rapporteur could only occur in a subsequent commission to evaluate the agreements.
The third folder, social welfare, is stuck. There are steps from the socialists for the transfer of Rodalies, but the PSOE only wants to grant lines that are not of “general interest.” Or in other words: only lines that had a beginning and an end in Catalonia would be crossed. An example: a freight line that runs between Papiol and Bellaterra. Or another in Lleida that the Republicans have already pointed out to the socialists that the Generalitat already manages. However, this opening of the Government occurred last Friday, but it is totally insufficient for ERC and the Government.
In social welfare there is another subfolder: ending the fiscal deficit. ERC pushes to obtain better financing. The Republicans propose that the Generalitat collect all taxes and end this fiscal deficit, which in 2021 alone, according to calculations by the Department of Economy, was 22,000 million euros. Esquerra understands that the solution cannot come at once due to the economic amount and the size of the proposals, but calls on Sánchez to find a middle ground.
But ERC has a complaint: the political negotiation advances minimally and in fits and starts, but it entails an economic negotiation that gets completely stuck, according to ERC, when the issues land in the Ministry of Finance, headed by María Jesús Montero. Aspects such as the Minimum Living Income, the 60 million for the Catalunya Media City audiovisual center, the amount for the expansion of Mossos d’Esquadra agents from 18,000 to 22,000 troops that was agreed years ago or the scholarships are some of the issues that Esquerra denounces that they have not been made effective for this reason.
The president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, attends the 28th Entrepreneur’s Night this week in Sant Cugat del Vallès, organized by the Cecot employers’ association. There he will meet with the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños. Previously, the president of the parliamentary group, Josep Maria Jové, met in Barcelona with the minister, as reported by RAC1.
