The president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, has decided to put aside, for the moment, the dialogue table between Catalan parties, upon detecting “short-term maneuvers” by some opposition group, which would make it difficult to reach consensus around a proposal so that Catalonia can hold an agreed referendum.
Last October, after receiving a report from experts on how to propose a “clarity agreement” to the Canadian in order to organize a self-determination referendum agreed with the State, Aragonès announced his intention to convene a table of Catalan parties after the investiture. by Pedro Sánchez. However, in statements to EFE, Aragonès has admitted that there is not a favorable climate for this meeting to serve to articulate a consensual proposal to be transferred to the Government.
Only ERC and En Comú Podem defend the idea of ??a “clarity agreement”, while JxCat made it clear that it does not support it and the PSC maintains that the Catalan party table should serve to address more pressing issues, such as drought or education. , and not to deal with more politically controversial issues, such as the referendum.
The Catalan match table, therefore, is postponed until conditions change: “There will be no date if there is no content,” Aragonès warned. “There is a proposal on my part, which is the agreement of clarity. The other political formations have the opportunity to formulate proposals, and at the moment there are none,” he stated.
According to Aragonès, “a table of parties must serve to advance. And at the moment, seeing short-term maneuvers that are taking place, there would be the risk of it pulling back.”
Asked if his allusion to “short-term maneuvers” refers to JxCat’s unexpected ‘no’ to the amnesty law in last Tuesday’s vote in Congress, he indicated: “I will not give names and surnames, but I think it is evident “You just need to see what happens in the last weeks and months. What was impossible becomes possible, and in what was protected and no amendment had to be made, there end up being amendments at the last minute.”
“I will convene the party table when I know that it serves to advance the resolution of the political conflict, and not so that there is a castling of the parties,” concluded the Catalan president, who has claimed that it is ERC that has been there for a long time. “putting solutions on the table” such as pardons, the elimination of the crime of sedition or, now, the agreed referendum.
From Junts, its spokesperson Josep Rius has replied to Aragonès that the clarity agreement is “dead and buried.” In his X account, Rius has pointed out that “tacticism is promoting an agreement of clarity after being rejected by the Parliament to cover up the failure of the PSOE-ERC dialogue table.” “Failure after failure. The clarity agreement, more than put on hold: death and buried,” the post-convergent spokesperson concluded.
On the other hand, Aragonès has been “absolutely convinced” that he will get the support of at least two opposition groups to be able to approve the Catalan accounts for this year: “There will be budgets for the year 2024,” he assured.
He did not want to specify whether he considers it more feasible to reissue the agreement that he sealed last year with the PSC and the Commons or if he still sees it possible to convince JxCat or the CUP, but he has indicated that the conversations are “intensifying” and he hopes that ” soon” there may be a budget proposal to transfer to Parliament.
“We have a framework of trust with the parliamentary groups. I hope that it will ensure that we soon have a budget agreement and that we can explain it to the citizens,” said Aragonès, who stressed that in the conversations with socialists and commoners they are not talking about “budgets of other administrations.”
The budgets of the Generalitat, he insisted, “are important in themselves and should not be subordinated” to the State accounts or any other negotiation in which ERC may participate.
