Not that there is great chaos on the other side, but capricious parliamentary arithmetic after the general election. So for Pere Aragonès, a unique opportunity presents itself to make effective the main demand of independence: a referendum on self-determination. This Tuesday, in his intervention in Parliament during the general policy debate, the president will draw the possible investiture of Pedro Sánchez as the beginning of a “key” legislature to set the conditions for that referendum that would allow Catalan citizenship vote on independence.
According to La Vanguardia, the president of the Generalitat, during his nearly two-hour speech, will demand “courage” and “responsibility” from the socialist leader to seal an agreement in this regard and to address once and for all “the political conflict in depth”. It will affect this so much that it will place it as a central element of the Government’s political action from now on.
This is so because the head of the Government takes the amnesty for granted. For some time now the Catalan Executive and ERC cadres have been trying to instill this idea, despite the fact that the PSOE insists actively and passively that it has not been agreed upon, or even considered seriously.
The contradiction in opinions is great. Without going any further, yesterday the training went further and assured that the negotiation has already overcome the “political part” and has entered the “technical” field, and that there is already an exchange of documents between the different actors involved in the talks, without specifying or providing more details on the matter. “Now we are in the technical questions of the amnesty, the political part has already been resolved”, emphasized the spokeswoman for the Republicans, Raquel Sans.
Of course, for Aragonès the possible amnesty does not fall out of nowhere. He will try to make it very clear today. It will highlight all the work of ERC during the past legislature. Here, special mention for the pardons of June 2021, the repeal of the crime of sedition in the Penal Code and the reform of the crime of embezzlement, despite the fact that justice has not interpreted the modifications of this last crime as proposed by the PSOE, United Podemos and ERC. Therefore, the president will brag about the negotiation in front of JxCat, whom he will applaud for opting for this route – he has denied it for years – after the results of the general elections of July 23. “For four years we have been very alone” is one of the phrases that the Republicans have expressed the most in recent months. Aragonès will take up this idea.
Be that as it may, the option put forward by the head of government for the resolution of the political conflict was put forward last semester: a clarity agreement that sets the conditions for an independence referendum. The first opinion of the academics appointed by the Generalitat should have been released in June of this year, but it has been delayed. Aragonès will announce this Tuesday that the work of these experts will be made public in the days following the general policy debate, which will last until Friday.
The focus of the president’s speech is on the resolution of the political conflict, but most of it will be aimed at the Government’s action regarding policies undertaken to improve the well-being of citizens. He will again appeal to the “Catalonia of 8 million” people, as he did at the Day, and to influence the challenges that the Catalan Executive must face to improve the conditions of an increasingly diverse city . The panorama of difficulties is extensive: the drought, the waiting lists for public health, the poor figures on school performance in Catalonia, the low implementation of renewable sources, the eternal struggle for the cultural sector to obtain 2% of the money budgeted, the doubts about El Prat airport… All, in short, are aspects that undermine the political action of Pere Aragonès.
Language is one of the greatest expressions of this diversity. Aragonès will expose Catalan as one of the main cohesive elements of Catalonia of 8 million.
Likewise, it will make a positive balance of the Catalan economy, with the high figures in imports and exports as a flag, as well as the good employment data. And it will detail the universalization of the school voucher, of 70 euros, for primary and secondary school students.
