“It is a country problem and as such we must be able to work together thinking of the common good and from shared responsibility.” The government spokesperson, Patrícia Plaja, spoke like this this afternoon at a press conference to stress the need for political consensus to deal with the drought in Catalonia. With the swamps at 27% capacity, the situation is worrying to say the least. That is why the Government proposed a summit for this Friday, March 31, between the political groups that make up the Parliament. Plaja, in turn, has appealed to abandon partisanship and not use the drought as an electoral “throwing weapon”.
The spokeswoman has not hesitated to compare the situation of the drought with the covid. For the Government, points of consensus must be found, “as we did during the pandemic.” “You have to be able to work together, abandon partisan battles, put them aside and work with the utmost responsibility for the good of all citizens”, Plaja has raised in a pre-electoral context, with the municipal elections two months away they could shake precisely joint action.
As a preliminary, the Catalan Executive met yesterday together with several of them. In fact, the PSC, Junts, los comunes, the CUP and ERC, as well as the director of the Agència Catalana de l’Aigua (ACA), Samuel Reyes, came together to “start working on measures and possible points of consensus”. There will be more appointments before Friday. At the moment, Ciudadanos and the PP have not participated, of whom the Government assures that they are invited, but they have not called for previous meetings. Vox is not expected: “We do not work with the extreme right,” Plaja stressed.
However, the fact that most of the political groups go hand in hand will not be enough and the Catalan Executive has also appealed to the co-responsibility of institutions and all citizens.
With Friday’s summit, the Government seeks, as Plaja explained in the press conference after today’s Consell Executiu, to alleviate the immediate effects of water scarcity, but also to lay the foundations for medium and long-term measures. “For years, short-term management has been carried out. It is a reality that we must face and start a new period, we must fine-tune the facilities we have”, she stated.
The Executive of Pere Aragonès managed last week to have the Parliament validate a first decree of initiatives. The summit should serve to agree on new measures, with a new one that could well complement or update those already carried out.
One of those that has provoked the greatest controversy is the sanctioning regime for municipalities in the event of possible non-compliance. Plaja has influenced today the idea that the Government has no will to collect, but “dissuasive”. In any case, the spokeswoman has assured that the Government has been working for some time to face the drought: “The summit is not a starting point for the Government to address the drought, measures have been applied for 29 months to face this different stage of drought that the country is suffering. The summit is the sharing of what the Government is doing”. “It is not a summit of a photo”, Plaja wanted to conclude.
