Pere Aragonès (Pineda de Mar, 1982) receives La Vanguardia at the beginning of his last year as president, excited to be a candidate again and satisfied that the path of dialogue that his party opened in Catalonia has been consolidated.
With one year left until the elections, in your investiture speech you set three challenges. Go for it. The first was to face with total determination the emergencies and social inequalities that we suffer. Has progress been made in this area?
Catalonia has made progress, but there is still a long way to go. If we just look, for example, at the unemployment rate indicator. Today we have unemployment of 8.5%, the lowest in the last 15 years. We have a welfare state with many challenges, but with more instruments than ever and with more workers at the service of education, health, security or social services.
The second was to promote an economic reconstruction based on the industrial issue.
My government has promoted the National Pact for Industry, which had unanimous support from a political point of view, with great agreement also with the social agents and all the sectors involved.
And the third point he talked about was making amnesty and self-determination inevitable.
We have come a good part of the way. I want to remember that when I was sworn in as president we had nine people in prison. There was no established framework for political dialogue and Catalonia was just emerging from a pandemic that has left very deep scars. Today, almost three years later, we have the political prisoners released and an agreed amnesty that will be approved soon.
Are you satisfied with your relationship with the central government?
The relationship that I would like to have with the Government would be state to state. I am an independentist. Therefore, I can never be satisfied with a relationship that is between an autonomous Catalonia and a Spain on which I depend. But I believe that there has been a change that has not been easy, that has been based on betting on dialogue and negotiation. When we made this bet, there were sectors that disdained it, in Catalonia and Spain, but today we have a large majority of the Parliament that clearly supports this path. And those who had criticized it, who had considered that it was of no use, today begin to practice it.
Those who say they have signed up now, that is, Junts, seem to have arrived later, but they have been ahead of them because in this week’s recent session in Congress it gave the impression that they have negotiated better…
Beyond the sensations and the headlines, we have to see how these things come to fruition, because at the moment what we know, everything is very generic and there are no details. The relevant agreements this week that have occurred are others. Firstly, a royal decree law has been validated that provides tools to protect Catalans from poverty, as well as the guaranteed income of citizenship that will be managed jointly by the Generalitat.
In view of how this first session has gone, do you think that ERC should change strategy and do a little like Junts and tighten the rope more to try to achieve more things?
I think that the State government will have to reflect on which dynamics it favors and which it does not. We have a very clear strategic approach that is not based on tactics or last-minute escapades. We have a clear commitment to negotiation, to the resolution of the political conflict, to be able to culminate it with the exercise of a referendum. Along with this, we have placed three objectives for 2024: unique financing for Catalonia, which is also the culmination of the transfer of Rodalies and a clear commitment, from Catalonia, but also that there must be a commitment on the part of the State in the promotion and defense of the Catalan language.
From the fruits obtained by Junts, the delegation of immigration powers has appeared. Are you ok with it? I ask because ERC voted against this transfer in a vote in Parliament.
I want to point out that what the Parliament voted against was a specific text, which Junts had proposed in this case, and that we did not support because there were many elements in common with those who use immigration to decohere society. Therefore, we will not be found with populist discourses that use immigration for electoral purposes. I am pro-independence and, therefore, I want all the powers in immigration and in all areas. And another issue is security issues. I think that mixing it does a disservice to the country and distances itself from the long tradition of Catalanism, which Junts or previously Convergència had also defended from that integrative Catalanism.
In the plenary session, the obstacles to initiate the amnesty law were also overcome. Will ERC present amendments to the project?
If there are amendments that are presented, they will be made with agreement, especially with the State Government, because they are technical amendments to improve the text. The point is that it must be as solid a law as possible, because we see that they have enemies. There are enemies of resolution in the connection of political conflict. There are enemies of moving from the fact that this country goes from a situation of conflict to an institution of debate, dialogue, negotiation and being able to find agreements. And these enemies are very powerful at the level of Spain and will try to boycott the application of the law in its spirit and in its form.
In this climate of consensus that is offered to the Government, it is the same that must wait for the socialists to approve their budgets, right?
I call not only to the PSC but also to the commons, Junts and the CUP, with the parties with which we have reached agreements throughout this entire legislature to assume their responsibility for the budgets. We have done the work as a government and we have prepared a project that foresees an increase in spending of 2,400 million euros, which foresees providing our country’s healthcare with an extraordinary fund of 800 million, or that the field of education increases more than 9%.
The Sánchez Government needs your votes to approve its own. It seems logical that you support each other
Budgets will have to be negotiated, here and there
Don’t you take your support for the central government budgets for granted?
Esquerra has not signed any blank checks. Nor will we ask anyone to sign a blank check for our government. Our desire is for there to be good budgets in Catalonia and good budgets in the State.
You mentioned that your government has done the job, but there are many doubts in public opinion about the management of your government. Let’s go to more specific issues: drought. What has gone wrong for the Barcelona region to be about to enter this emergency situation?
What has happened is that we are suffering the longest and most intense drought ever recorded so far. If it had not been for the fact that we activated the special drought plan two years ago, we would have been in an emergency a year ago. We have resisted extraordinarily well and, obviously, we must continue expanding infrastructure, especially because in the future we will continue to have more droughts.
But you will admit that there has been an investment deficit in recent years, right?
I think we should see the full photo. And in the end, look, the Catalan Water Agency, in this country, has been managed by the PSC, Convergència Unió and Junts, Initiative and the Commons and now Esquerra has been managing it for two years.
Are you worried about restrictions affecting the industry?
I am worried about any impact. The primary sector, the farmers and ranchers of our country, are already making an important effort. And now it will be necessary for this effort to be assumed by other sectors with a different intensity.
Do you reject the interconnection of the Ebre waters with the ATLL?
Yes, clearly. And I do it for two reasons. The first is because it does not make sense, and even less does it go against the EU criteria. The internal basins of Catalonia, in the future and with the infrastructure that we are building, must be able to be fully developed without having to resort to water from the Ebro. And the second is that, no matter how fast we go in making the interconnection, it would not serve for current drought.
Renewable deficit. How do you plan to meet the objective of these energies becoming 50% of the electricity mix in 2030 when we are now only at 15%?
This is not done overnight. There is a question of regulation, planning, incentives and procedures that must be followed. When we began this legislature, there were nine megawatts authorized in the processing phase to build renewable energy plants. Now we are already exceeding 1,600 megawatts.
Education after the PISA report. How can you explain the paradox that there has never been so much budget invested in education as now and instead there have been such low educational performance results?
The answer is very simple: results in education do not occur overnight. A student is in the educational system of our country from the age of 3 to at least 16. Therefore, we are talking about 13 years. They are years in which we invest physically to train a person and then we continue with professional training or at the university level. Therefore, it is a policy that results are seen in the medium and long term. The PISA results probably explain a situation that is a consequence of decisions made several years ago.
In fact, now that you mention the issue of screens, why is the government so hesitant to make the decision to ban cell phones from schools?
This will occur shortly. And the decisions will go for a restriction on the use of mobile phones in primary schools, and for very restrictive action and regulation in high schools. That is, if there is any teaching activity that requires the use of the mobile phone, go ahead, but in the rest it should not be present in the classrooms or in the playgrounds to encourage spaces for interaction between them.
Given the situation of chaos in primary care, what do we Catalans who get used to queues say or to sign up for private security?
We have made a clear commitment to the public health of that country. And that happens first of all through a commitment to professionals. The agreement that we have made in the area of ??the ICS is a good agreement that will favor the retention of talent, so that doctors trained in Catalonia have more opportunities here and do not have to go abroad. Also with nurses who can fully develop their specialties. These days we are in a flu epidemic situation and, therefore, there will be more people who need immediate attention and tension may be generated in some centers.
We have been dragging on for years about the expansion of the airport and the problems at Rodalies. The solution to both seems to be the creation of commissions… This goes on forever…
The transfer of Rodalies will be a reality shortly. What was required here was political will and it must be accompanied by resources, but this is a detailed agreement. It will begin to be seen in the general budgets of the State as agreed.
And the airport?
Regarding the future of El Prat airport, I want to remember that the objective is not an expansion for the sake of expansion. The goal is to have more intercontinental connections, especially with the Pacific. And for that we will have to look for solutions that are not simple if we want to comply with environmental standards. And along with all this, I believe that the best way to ensure the future of El Prat airport is for it to be managed from here.
You have one year left as president, how would you like to be remembered?
We are the ones who have paved the way when no one believed that negotiation served to resolve the political conflict and when everyone said that amnesty was impossible and that we should not even consider a transfer of Rodalies, that we would not have it. Today everyone signs up for the negotiation strategy, each in their own way, but in the end we are all in the same negotiation dynamic and that is good.
When will you call elections? Will it exhaust the legislature?
I have always said that the elections will be on February 25. We are a government that has been approving budgets year after year, despite the situation of not having a stable parliamentary majority. It has been many years since budgets were approved in Catalonia year after year, continuously, and we do not have a complete legislature in Catalonia.
And do you want to be the ERC candidate for the elections?
The ERC candidates are decided by the party and, therefore, we decide them together with the established procedures. I am not going to skip these procedures. Obviously, when you are governing the country, you see that the projects are not completed in a legislature. Therefore, I have all the energy, all the strength to continue.
