Jéssica Albiach receives La Vanguardia in Parliament on the day the Amnesty law passes the Justice Commission’s filter, but her mind is on the Catalan budgets, in which she maintains her refusal if Hard Rock is not ruled out. He rejects that it is due to electoral interest, blames the PSC and ERC and warns the republicans that their pressure in Madrid will not have an effect.
Has your good relationship with President Aragonès become rare?
We have a cordial relationship, correct, but we are noticing important differences these days following the biggest casino in Europe that the PSC wants to install in Camp de Tarragona. But it’s true that I haven’t spoken to him in more than a fortnight.
ERC threatens to overturn the State budget if the Catalans are not approved.
For us they have always been separate folders. ERC should not lose sight of the fact that the person blocking the Catalan budgets is Salvador Illa. I am surprised that a party like ERC thinks that Catalonia’s budgets are decided in Madrid. They are decided in Catalonia.
Then it won’t take effect…
Yolanda Díaz is aware of our position and shares that the decisions that affect Catalonia are taken here.
Is the fault of the situation Illa or Aragonès?
On Wednesday in Parliament there was a turning point. After hiding behind successive excuses, the president was very clear and said that if he stops the Hard Rock, Mr. Illa will stand out from the budgets. This is the crux of the matter. We have a PSC that makes Hard Rock a condition and a president who is incapable of leading and setting limits.
Can you imagine Junts supporting the budgets?
What I find difficult is to imagine Mr. Aragonès lowering the inheritance tax in order to lose 1,200 million to the public coffers. But if he decides to close an agreement with Junts, he is the one who will have to explain it.
Running out of budgets would be more expensive: 2.4 billion.
It does not make sense that Aragonès started the legislature talking about green transformation and is now buying the agenda of the PSC. The Hard Rock is not an anecdote. It symbolizes a debate between the old and the new, around a productive model based on the overexploitation of resources, on speculation, which would bring more insecurity, mafias, money laundering, and which would consume eight million liters of water a day in the midst of the worst drought in the history of Catalonia. It is difficult for me to understand that the PSC blocks the budgets for a macrocasino that goes against the values ??that Catalonia has always represented.
Apart from that, isn’t there anything about the pact with the PSC that makes you cringe?
It is an insufficient and inflexible agreement. We have a crisis of access to housing, families that don’t make ends meet, and we don’t see brave policies in this regard either.
We are approaching an election period. Breaking away from the PSC and ERC is also good…
Catalonia has had budgets in recent years thanks to En Comú Podem, even in the election year. We can be accused of many things, but not of electoralism with budgets because they are a tool for ordinary people. We sit with good will, but we don’t give blank checks.
Do you think Catalans prioritize the environment over economic growth?
Catalonia can progress. We need industry because we don’t want to be just the resort of Europe, but industry must make a transition. We want a good economy, not a casino, sun and beach economy because with this climate emergency it will make us weaker and more vulnerable.
Is it incompatible to have better road or airport connections and respect the environment?
The expansion of the airport is not our model. Our model is very similar to that proposed by Pimec: one country, one capital, three airports and the rail connection between the three. We have to get out of Barcelona-centrism and continue to bring millions of tourists. Tourism is positive if it is sustainable and does not turn us into a theme park.
Don’t you think it’s hard to win elections by saying no to everything? At the Hard Rock, at the airport, on the B-40…
Not all projects that arrive are positive. Sovereignty means choosing which projects are positive for the people and the territory, and which ones are for four or eight people to end up at the cost of tearing up the territory and of a job insecurity that is already widespread.
How do you see the unique financing proposed by ERC?
Our proposal is a unique agreement between Catalonia and the State because we have powers that others do not have, but there must be solidarity and orderliness. Funding cannot be decided by a party with 33 deputies no matter how much it is in the Government. We demand a table of parties where we can reach a consensus among the Catalanist forces on what the model should be.
If the socialists win the Catalan elections and she needs it, would she be willing?
We have always been very clear about the pact policy. We are in Barcelona, ??in the State, in the municipalities and in Catalonia. Our allies are the progressive forces, and I think we are the only progressive force that would not form a government with Junts.
But you say that the PSC is more right-wing than the PSOE…
It is unheard of. It would be hard for me to imagine Pedro Sánchez blocking budgets for a casino.
Don’t you think Ada Colau is burning his leadership?
Ada’s bet is consistent, but people do not understand that municipal politics is not small politics, but the politics of proximity. Ada is fighting to the end for Barcelona to have a progressive government. What surprises me the most is that ERC has decided to be a subordinate force to the PSC, we see it in Barcelona and Catalonia.
How do you see Sumar and YolandaDíaz? Is it losing momentum?
Yolanda Díaz is the best Minister of Labor we have ever had and a benchmark in Europe, and Sumar has made it possible for us to have a new progressive Government. What happened in Galicia was predictable because there was no time for the project to take root.
But isn’t she being very kind to the PSOE?
Yolanda Díaz has a clear voice, but acts with loyalty to the central government. Another thing is where the debate takes place, in public or in private. On the genocide of Israel and rents, for example, we have a braver position than Pedro Sánchez.
I in the Koldo case?
Here we ask for an investigative commission in Congress, that the truth be known, that it gets to the end and that whoever falls falls.
