The president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, explained yesterday in Madrid the content of the “single financing” proposal for Catalonia to manage all the taxes generated in its territory that the Minister of Economy, Natàlia Mas, had announced the day before.
Despite knowing the list of objections that the project has raised – “in the PP, in Vox and among some socialist barons who never fail” -, Aragonès made an effort to detail the number of times he has heard the word in recent years impossible to try to deactivate measures that, today, are a reality, such as pardons, the dialogue table, the repeal of the crime of sedition or the recent processing of the Amnesty law. And he concluded his approach by saying that the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, needs more ERC than the other way around.
“We have three years ahead of us and there will be many votes in which our votes will be needed (…). We must take advantage of our current capacity for influence”, he stressed, and accentuated the existing communication vessel, in his opinion, between the duration of the current legislature and the crystallization of future measures in fiscal matters.
Among the details of the Catalan concert revealed yesterday by Aragonès at an informative breakfast organized by Europa Press there would be two ways to transfer part of the taxes collected to the central government. One as payment for services received, and the other as a contribution “to equity between territories”, but through a “time-limited” mechanism. This variable could mean that for a while the quota to compensate for the fiscal deficit “suffering” the citizens of Catalonia was not realized. “I will not negotiate for other territories, but I will not accept that the resources that must reach the citizens of Catalonia be conditioned by other territories”, he suggested in a clear allusion to the policies deployed by Isabel DíazAyuso in the Community of Madrid, which “makes the speculative economy and fiscal dumping a source of pride”.
The president placed Catalonia as the “third community that contributes more resources” to the common fund, but as “fourteenth when it comes to receiving it”. And based on this disparity, he invited the PSC to “join the defense of the interests of Catalonia” instead of “bend to those of the State”, no matter how much the PSOE is now at the head of the central government.
Aragonès defined the need for an own financing system as another step “to solve the Catalan conflict”, although he reiterated that the end of this journey remains self-determination: “I am ready to agree on the dates and conditions under which we would consider the result acceptable, but there will be a referendum”, he emphasized in front of an audience that agreed when defining the framework of ERC’s proposals: “We are already in the campaign”.
