The opposition leader, Salvador Illa, left the meeting he held last Friday with the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, satisfied. The hour and a half meeting served to show that something has moved since the ERC interposed an insurmountable veto against the Socialists years ago, perhaps because the need is pressing and the PSC is now necessary to approve the budgets of the Generalitat if Junts maintains its negative. To corroborate this impression raised in private, the Socialists want the president to strengthen this new phase by summoning them first in the round of contacts that the Government will begin this week with the groups.
And it is that on Friday there was no photo that sealed the turn that Aragonès is printing in the relationship with the PSC, opening the door a crack for a possible budget agreement; a door that, on the other hand, is wide open for Junts, En Comú Podem and the CUP. That is why Illa demands deference for the formal start of the negotiations, remembering that hers is the first group in the Catalan Chamber and therefore she should be the one with whom to inaugurate this new round of contacts.
“We know that the president will start a round of contacts with the parliamentary groups this week. Salvador Illa will attend this meeting when we are called, but we remind him that we are the first group in Parliament and we would like the established order to be followed”, claimed the Socialist spokesperson, Elia Tortolero.
Socialist sources value the “change” that Aragonès has finally decided to include them in the budget talks “coming from where we come from”, and highlight the differences they see between the president of the ERC, Oriol Junqueras, and the president in his dealings with the PSC. But the question is whether the negotiations will finally continue and whether they will take place with transparency or not.
At the moment, secrecy prevails over the content of the meeting between Aragonès and Illa on Friday, but an hour and a half is enough time to go deeply into many topics, even to talk about numbers, albeit roughly. That is what this round of contacts would be designed for, which the PSC applauds and in which it wants to be the protagonist, although at the same time they make it less relevant.
“It is the president’s obligation” to hold these meetings with the groups, therefore, “let’s not place it as an extraordinary thing” because “we are late”, Tortolero pointed out in reference to the foreseeable approval of the accounts beyond January 1, 2023.
In order for the budgets to be approved in a timely manner, the Government should approve them at the Consell Executiu this week, at the same time as the round of contacts is held, to which the Government could already go with all the numbers and not just with a sketch
While the calendar is being clarified, another issue is intermingled in the Catalan political landscape, the reform of the crime of sedition, especially after the words of former president Puigdemont acknowledging conversations with members of the PSOE to explore their opinion. Puigdemont rejects this route to favor his possible return to Catalonia and in the PSC they do not deny that these contacts could have taken place, although they “remain outside” of the eventual reform of the Penal Code that the central government may undertake.
“The contacts that Puigdemont says they may have had are left out. The PSC defends that a reform is necessary, that it has to be approved in Congress and therefore there has to be a majority” for this, Tortolero commented, convinced that, like the pardons, that “they were finally accepted” by a majority reform of this crime “is the way to turn the page”. In fact, “you only have to compare scenarios: how is Catalonia when the PP governs and how is it when the socialists do so”, she has compared.
