About to enter the final stretch of the legislature, the key partners of the coalition government move between dissatisfaction and the confirmation that, taking into account the electoral reality, they have no alternative. ERC insists that they will not favor a government with the participation of the extreme right and “an increasingly extreme right”, a maxim repeated four years ago by Oriol Junqueras. The Republicans facilitated the investiture in exchange for the dialogue table and then consented to three general budgets from which for the moment they have obtained little revenue. The PNV, for its part, assumes that the investiture agreement will not be fulfilled, although it will expedite the mandate to try to improve the disappointing balance. EH Bildu, meanwhile, will seek to accentuate the unprecedented role that the current correlation of forces has allowed him.
The fact is that the three formations aspired to exhibit triumphs before municipal elections that are a stone’s throw away: in May. Esquerra had a rain of millions for Catalonia through the general budgets for which, given the antecedents, frowning falls short. In 2021, the budget execution for Catalonia was 35%. From 2022, the latest data is that of the first semester: 16%.
The great asset, however, of ERC is the dialogue table in its “anti-repressive” aspect. Hence, the small-mouthed Republicans attribute the pardons and changes in the Court of Accounts, which have attenuated the economic sanctions to some thirty promoters of the process. But there is no news of a possible self-determination referendum.
The reform of the Criminal Code that ERC promoted together with the Government had to be the great achievement to be shamelessly exhibited in public. The crime of sedition no longer exists. But the changes in embezzlement, a touchstone for more than twenty former high-ranking officials of the Generalitat to see their accusations palliated in court, have fallen on deaf ears after the Supreme Court ignored them. Junqueras’s obsession was that those who worked under him in 2017 – especially Josep Maria Jové and Lluís Salvadó – will not enter prison while he has already been pardoned.
The Bilateral Commission has been practically a joke for ERC. The last meeting was on February 18, 2022. It is the meeting that became known for the transfer of ownership of the Turó de l’Home meteorological observatory. The Minister of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrà, described the agreements as absolutely “insufficient”; Isabel Rodríguez, minister spokesperson, praised them to the category of “historical”. But the truth is that to this day none of them have been implemented. Three transfers of powers and six transfers of assets were agreed. According to the Government, the scholarships and the transfer of treatment plants is what is about to be sweet. The rest are bogged down partly by paperwork. “Everything is slow, also on our part,” they admit to the Catalan Executive. And the total transfer of Rodalies is the never ending story.
There is an addition. The mother of the commissions is Bilateral. Three more hang from it: economic, infrastructure and transfers. This third is where the transfers are sealed and the last time it met was November 17… 2010.
ERC does not hold much hope that the dialogue table and the Bilateral will be convened again in 2023. The cycle and electoral interests rule. The PSOE needs to redirect itself before the PP. “But the legislature has not yet finished,” they say from the Government.
There is more. The co-management of the European funds, which the Republicans agreed to in the first budgets and for the approval of the last state of alarm for the covid, never came. Also the minimum vital income. Then there were unique negotiations, such as the quotas in Catalan on digital platforms.
In the case of the PNV, their dissatisfaction with the results produced by the legislature has to do above all with the breach of the investiture pact, but also with the role that Sánchez gave them. The Basque nationalists signed a 12-point agreement with the PSOE on December 30, 2019. The jeltzales attached particular importance to point number three: full compliance with the Gernika Statute of 1979. It is no coincidence that the moment of greatest harmony came seven weeks later, when a transfer schedule was agreed with the 32 pending competitions. Three years later, however, that calendar is a dead letter. 25 powers are still pending transfer and it is clear that the vast majority will not reach the Basque Country in the remainder of the legislature. The jeltzales also demanded preferential treatment from Sánchez, an aspect that was included in the first two points of the investiture agreement.
The PNV does not end the legislature. He needs to muscle up before the end of his term and, on the electoral horizon, show off achievements derived from his support for Sánchez. He will speed up the coming months to be able to appear before the Basque citizens with a somewhat more positive background. The priorities in the short term are transfers such as the Cercanías train, which has not yet been closed, or Immigration, although they also demand that their role as preferred partner be recognized. The PNV needs to value its role in Madrid, one of its historical assets, and does not want to enter into speculation about a hypothetical future support for Núñez Feijóo, without Vox in the equation, in the unlikely event that the numbers show up. Although he revalues ??his votes, the hypothesis is extremely unpopular among his bases.
In the case of EH Bildu, the coalition opted for active abstention in the investiture vote and has subsequently become an indispensable partner of the coalition government. It is perhaps his greatest achievement in these years. At a time when the focus of Basque politics has largely shifted to Madrid, the Abertzale coalition brings sparks to its role in Congress, as defender of a social agenda and advocate for Basque interests, an area in which the jeltzals had had no rival until now.
Contrary to the case of the PNV, the EH Bildu agreements in Madrid are not public. It escapes no one, however, that the end of the dispersal of ETA prisoners, to give an example, would not have come so quickly had it not been for the role of the Abertzale coalition. In the final stretch of the legislature, he will try to continue making a profit from his role in Madrid, although without excessively compromising a coalition government that he hopes will be reissued.
