Carlos Mazón, president of the Generalitat Valenciana, receives La Vanguardia on Thursday, one day after his visit to Catalonia, where he has staged a notable complicity with the great Catalan employers’ association Foment del Treball. “I think it has been a very good starting signal for this new stage of business relations with Catalonia” he states in this interview after highlighting that “I am satisfied with taking care of my main client, because the main client of the Valencian Community in commercial terms is Catalonia.” “I believe that many new and important possibilities for collaboration, even investment, are opening up,” he added after assuming that he had come to Catalonia to, among other things, open the doors of the Valencian Community to Catalan companies: “It is an offer generic, it is not a political offer” he specifies. And he anticipates that he will soon receive the Catalan chambers of commerce “to improve our relations and continue working on business opportunities.”
The president is aware of “how unique” it is that a regional baron of the PP and, furthermore, a Valencian, opens up to reopening bridges with Catalonia and, furthermore, in Catalonia. And he recognizes that this agreement with the employers, who applauded his intervention, has not been possible between the two governments. “The relationship with Pere Aragonés did not start on the right foot.” He remembers that the Catalan president went to Valencia a few months ago without telling him: “he neither shared his agenda, nor proposed any meeting… not even a greeting.” And he criticizes that he attended an event “where he clearly advocated for the Catalan Countries and, then, said that he was going to subsidize the Valencian Catalan entities.” Mazón laments that “the sovereign spirit has presided over the direct, indirect and induced aspects of each and every one of the relationships that have been put in place.” Therefore, before speaking with Aragonés, he demands to apply “the principle of reciprocity, or at least some education.”
Just the day Mazón was in Catalunya, in the afternoon, the Catalan elections were called for next May 12. He does not believe that a Catalan Government with a non-independence president will change the scenario too much: “For me, the one who is separatist is as much a separatist as the one who allows it or the one who kneels before it.” But he admits that “a non-independence government in Catalonia would be desirable to be able to talk about doing more things together, with the Valencian Community; about many more things that unfortunately cannot be talked about now.” Although he insists, “I honestly have the feeling that things are difficult, in any case.”
The day this interview was held at the Palau de la Generalitat, the Congress of Deputies approved the Amnesty Law, much to Mazón’s regret: “It is a fake means of pacification, which wants to have winners and losers; It is turning the world upside down so that the winners are those who broke the law and the losers are those who defended the Constitution. It is not a pacification. “It is a surrender.”
Mazón believes that there is no concrete measure or political decision to resolve the Catalan problem. “This dream has gone so far out of hand that it will take us a long time to be able to work again with some normality between the Spanish regions. It will take us a long time, but we have to start.” And how to do it?: “With a long-term strategy, fostering ties from the cultural, business, commercial, and even sporting aspects.” However, Mazón is also clear that the problem “cannot be solved by counterattacking fiercely. We work every day with messages of harmony and normality like the one I tried to give on my recent visit to Catalonia or like the one we gave with water, promoting solidarity.”
In the middle of a week marked by journalistic revelations about Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner, the popular leader does not hesitate to defend the Madrid president and denounces “a situation of harassment by the Government of Spain” to his party partner. “As Pedro Sánchez said, who does the Prosecutor’s Office depend on?”
Nor does he avoid the controversy over the Guillem Agulló award in Les Corts: “As president of the PPCV, I have asked my party and my parliamentary group to look for meeting spaces to prevent the figure of Guillem Agulló from being manipulated with political opportunism. The PP has been, is and will be consistent with this. And, of course, what we are not willing to do, and what we do not think is serious, is that the memory of Guillem Agulló, who died in a fascist aggression, be played with.”
Regarding the execution of the Mediterranean corridor, Mazón sends a message to the neighboring community: “I have perceived that the demands of the Catalan business community are not the same now that we are trying to accelerate the Valencian section of the Mediterranean corridor. I have perceived it as business and I have perceived it institutionally. We have claimed the Catalan section with the same intensity with which we are claiming the Valencian section and we will claim the rest of the Mediterranean corridor. Because wealth really is in its integrality. I think that, on some occasions, the Catalan living and institutional forces, with partial visions, have lost many opportunities.”
Another issue that worries the president is the Government’s decision not to present budgets due to the electoral call in Catalonia. According to Mazón, “it is an extraordinary feeling of weakness that, due to an electoral call in an autonomous community, a Spanish Government does not dare to raise some accounts at a time of economic and political uncertainty.”
The regional leader demands the convening of a President’s Conference or a Fiscal and Financial Policy Council so that the Executive can convey to the autonomies how this new situation will affect the regions and the deficit objectives. Mazón fears the extension and remembers that the province of Alicante is the last of all in terms of territorial investment.
In the interview in the solemn library of the Palau de la Generalitat, Mazón talks about the other great workhorse of this autonomy and censures the “extraordinarily embarrassing” position of the Government of Spain. “They have said ‘no’ to a leveling fund while the necessary reform of the financing model takes place. We do not ask for it to have more than others, but to have a transitional space that allows us to live in equity and begin to slightly improve the financing of our healthcare and our social services,” he argues. And he seems surprised with PSPV’s zero demands on Pedro Sánchez.
Regarding water, the Valencian president did not hesitate to endorse the transfer of the Sagunt desalination plant to Barcelona. “I have always said the same thing: water belongs to everyone. And I say it when he comes to the Valencian Community or when he goes abroad.” Mazón explains that the Government of Spain has guaranteed him in writing, as he had demanded, that the transfer “will not affect the industrial and urban supply of Sagunto or the Valencian coast.” The Alicante leader, a native of a dry land, considers that “all this would not have happened if the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Government of Spain had done their homework and had built treatment plants and modernized irrigation systems.”
This is not the only claim that Mazón makes to the central government. “Alicante airport is the only international airport in Europe that does not have a double runway and does not have a rail connection. How are we going to compete? Growth forecasts are overshot. But even more urgent is the Manises airport, which is already on the verge of collapse. And it needs, not a second runway, but an expansion to be able to have more coverage.” Faced with this refusal by the Executive to expand the two main Valencian airports, Mazón does not intend to give up the battle as lost: “I will appeal to Valencian society so that we can all unite again to demand an infrastructure that is fundamental for the tourist and commercial future of the Valencian Community”.
