It is not that there is great chaos on the other side, but there is capricious parliamentary arithmetic after the general elections. So for Pere Aragonès there is a unique opportunity to make effective the main demand of the independence movement: a self-determination referendum. This Tuesday in his speech 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 of that referendum that would allow Catalan citizens to vote on the independence. As La Vanguardia has learned, 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 it once and for all. the political conflict in depth”. He will influence it so much that he will place it as a central element of the Government’s political action from now on.
This is because the head of the Government takes the amnesty for granted. The Catalan Executive itself and the ERC cadres have been trying to instil this idea for some time, despite the fact that the PSOE actively and passively insists that it is not agreed upon, nor even seriously raised. Therefore, the exercise of the right of self-determination is the next step for the president, once he has overcome, in his opinion, the commitment to amnesty with the pact by the Congress Board, signed on August 17 between the PSOE and ERC. .
The contradiction in opinions is great. Without going any further, this Monday the training went further and assured that the negotiation has already gone beyond 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 conversations, without specifying or providing more details in this regard. “Now we are in the technical issues of the amnesty, the political part has already been resolved,” highlighted the spokesperson for the Republicans, Raquel Sans.
Of course, for Aragonès the possible amnesty does not come out of nowhere. It will highlight all the work of ERC during the last legislature. Here, special mention for the June 2021 pardons, the repeal of the crime of sedition from 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, Unidas Podemos and ERC. Therefore, the president will take advantage of the negotiation against JxCat, whom he will applaud for choosing this path – he has denied it for years – after the results of the general elections on July 23. “For four years we have been very alone” is one of the phrases that Republicans have expressed the most in recent months. Aragonès will return to this idea.
The investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, which will be debated in parallel to the General Policy Debate in Parliament, is impossible. This is how Aragonès considers it. Under this premise, the president looks ahead. In the legislature that may open after Sánchez’s re-election, the Republican sees an ideal moment for the maximum independence demand. In fact, he will put special emphasis on Esquerra and Junts “taking advantage of their weight in Madrid.” The situation is unbeatable for their interests, since a possible government of the PSOE and Sumar does not have the possibility, as happened in the previous mandate with Ciudadanos in the chamber, of looking for other formulas to carry out its initiatives if not with the support of the forces that a priori will grant them their votes so that Sánchez becomes president again.
Be that as it may, the option that the head of the Government proposed for the resolution of the political conflict was raised 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 made known in June of this year, but it has been delayed. Aragonès will announce this Tuesday that the work of these experts will be 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 allocated to the Government’s action regarding policies undertaken to improve the well-being of citizens. He will once again appeal to the “Catalonia of 8 million” people, as he already did in the Diada, 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, waiting lists in public health, the poor figures on school performance in Catalonia, the low implementation of renewable sources, the eternal fight for the cultural sector to obtain 2% of the budgeted money , the doubts about the Prat airport… All of them are aspects that undermine Aragonès’ political action.
Language is one of the maximum expressions of this diversity. Aragonès will present Catalan as one of the main unifying elements of that Catalonia of 8 million.
Likewise, he will make a positive assessment of the Catalan economy, with the high figures in imports and exports as a banner, 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
