It was a demand from ERC to Pedro Sánchez to facilitate the approval of the general budgets: the transfer of more than 900 million euros to the Generalitat so that it executes pending State investments in key infrastructures in Catalonia. Today the Minister of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrà, has once again claimed that amount when she was reminded, in the press conference after the meeting of the Executive Council, that the route of the Ronda Nord that runs through the B-40 to improve the connection between Terrassa and Sabadell has yet to be signed.
Vilagrà has assured that the Government has received a new document from the Government on the Ronda Nord and that they are waiting to study the latest details. Only the seal is missing. But it has been at this point that the minister has indicated that “in parallel” the Catalan Executive has agreed a series of investments for which 914 million are missing that the State committed, unrelated to the B-40. It has sounded like a sine quan non, despite the fact that Vilagrà has denied it. In detail, it is about 384 million euros to improve the C-32 in Maresme; 250 million for the accesses of the AP-7 and the AP-2; on the Pyrenean axis highway, the N-260, which requires 260 million, and another 20 million for interchanges to improve communications by train.
These new demands run parallel to the pact that the Government signed with the PSC for the B-40 for the approval of the Generalitat’s budgets for 2023. An infrastructure that Pere Aragonès had to assume very much to his regret.
But for the next budgets, those of 2024, the Government has set Junts as a priority partner. The PSC and the commons would be waiting. “We need to work intensely with Junts.” Vilagrà has made it very clear in this way that he places the post-convergent formation as the first to negotiate the budgets of the Generalitat for 2024. The statement is in the logic of ERC these days, the party to which he belongs. Vilagrà has assured that “the objective is to work first with Junts; the machinery is running”.
The current accounts were approved by the Government thanks to the PSC, Esquerra and the commons. But the current context, with the Socialists and those of Ada Colau aligning themselves with the PP to avoid a pro-independence government in the Barcelona City Council have raised suspicions. And the general elections are one month away.
Necessity forces this rapprochement: the Catalan Executive only has 33 Republican parliamentarians who support it (the absolute majority in the Catalan Chamber is 68 deputies) and to be able to exhaust the legislature in due time and form, in February 2025, it is a tool that seems essential.
ERC has been reaching out to Junts for a few weeks to form a “sovereignty common front”. Timidly, withdrawing it at times, such as when he agreed with the PSC to take over the presidency of the Lleida and Tarragona councils, but he is looking for ways to strengthen himself and achieve some parliamentary stability.
Pere Aragonès called for a rapprochement between independentistas -especially between Esquerra and Junts- after the results of the municipal elections on May 28 and the rise of the right and the extreme right. Oriol Junqueras has also recalled time and again that the Republicans agreed to vote for the post-convergent Anna Erra as a substitute for Laura Borràs in the presidency of Parliament. Now, the president of ERC calls on Junts not to cede the presidency of the Barcelona Provincial Council to the PSC. An institution that manages more than 1,000 million euros and that until today is directed by the socialist Núria Marín thanks to the support of the post-convergents.
