“We are in injury time.” Deputies from the PSC and En Comú Podem agree on this, the parties that have allowed the Government of Pere Aragonès to approve its accounts in previous years. The 52% legislature with which the independence movement wanted to take flight broke up at the first bend due to discrepancies with the CUP and Junts and survives due to the support of the opposition via the budgets. With permission from the drought that Catalonia is suffering, the “complicated” mandate enters the final stretch at the same juncture.
Nobody knows how long the legislature will last. The opposition believes that Aragonès wants to “hold out” at least until next fall or until the beginning of 2025. And although the PSC conducts surveys in which it exceeds 45 seats, they have doubts about the digestion of the amnesty among their electorate and say that An abrupt end to the legislature does not suit them. Perhaps they confuse the president’s intention with the reality of the “weakest democratic government in Catalonia”, but before that it is unlikely that elections will be called, unless the water crisis worsens and makes social and political pressure unbearable.
With no forecast of significant rain on the horizon and with plans underway to import water in large ships, the opposition warns that the situation could end up exploding in the face of the Government. “What will happen when there are water restrictions in homes, businesses or tourism at the gates of summer?” they ask. Which leads them to doubt whether “a government can endure” in this situation and to conclude that “if something can take the Government ahead of itself ahead of time, it is drought.”
Only a heavy episode of rain can dilute the crisis, as happened in 2009, because the infrastructure planned to mitigate it will not be ready for at least two years. Meanwhile, the Government suffers the scourge of PSC, Comuns and Junts for its management in this and other adverse situations, such as the possible departure of Formula 1 to Madrid or the educational level of the students, after knowing the latest PISA report.
Salvador Illa’s party attacks the “inaction” of the pro-independence Executive in the last decade, but they are also not happy with the president’s management or with the role of the Catalan Water Agency, which is why they demand an agreement on the measures to be taken. “The Government continues to go alone,” they lament, and “what is dramatic will come when there are more severe restrictions on companies, in the agri-food sector, which generates 19% of the Catalan GDP,” they warn.
The commoners take advantage of the drought to demand that Aragonès make an ecological turn that involves giving up projects that, in their opinion, “go against the times”, such as ice rinks, ski resorts, the Hard Rock… “We can “have restrictions on mouth water for weeks and the Government has not approved a single savings measure in the tourism sector, nor has it regulated the snow slopes, many of which are owned by the Generalitat, nor the ice slopes, installed for Christmas,” they reproach .
With this panorama, the Catalan Executive will approve its budget proposal in a few days. But “starting in January we will be in the (electoral) campaign,” all parties agree. So Oriol Junqueras’ men need to sell achievements. The agreements for the investiture of Sánchez and the approval of two budgets in a row are a good asset that breaks the trend of the years of the process, in which less than half of the accounts were approved.
Catalan politics will once again delve into the budget debate in January. Last year there were six months of negotiation for an agreement with the PSC and it is common that both denounce that it has not been fulfilled, or not at all, which is why they prioritize executing what was agreed.
The socialists refuse to negotiate until they have tied up the commitments on the B-40, the El Prat airport and the Hard Rock, although unblocking the first two points depends on the central government. And so they maintain from ERC, who argue that it is not in their power to unravel them.
The highway is pending a reform of the Highway Law, and the airport is waiting for the Ministry of Transport and the Government to appoint the mixed commission that will analyze the possible expansion; but Minister Óscar Puente has just landed and changes at Aena are not ruled out. While the Hard Rock is waiting for the environmental report prior to the Urban Master Plan to be approved.
The budgets of the city of Barcelona are also at stake, pending the socialist mayor, Jaume Collboni, deciding who he wants to govern with for the next four years: with Junts, or with ERC and Barcelona En Comú. But the maxim of “we want budgets everywhere” that the commons championed when they were in charge of the Consistory no longer forces the formation of Ada Colau, who this time is determined to play hard.
The commons are demanding compliance with what was agreed in 2023 and demand that the Government stop projects such as the Hard Rock, incompatible with complying with what the PSC requests. “This time they are going to have to seduce us a lot” and “if they want budgets to obtain political air, let them work,” they say.
ERC has also met in recent weeks with the CUP. It is unlikely that their budgets will be approved, but Republicans want to regain their support for other issues during the remainder of the legislature.
