“If there is a crisis in Catalonia right now, it is the one causing the drought,” which is why the PSC is willing to offer its support to the Government in the face of the looming emergency situation, a situation that could lead, as it pointed out a couple of days of President Pere Aragonès, that Catalonia has to import water in large ships to make up for the shortage. To provide this support, the Catalan socialists urge the president to create a “water table” with the parties in which they can agree on the measures to be adopted, monitor the situation and “generate complicity.”
The PSC spokesperson in Parliament, Alícia Romero, has indicated that “the Government should not go alone” in this matter, but should “seek support, complicity if an emergency situation arises as a result of the serious drought that is hitting to Catalonia. In this sense, he has assessed that the Government has the power to decide whether or not it would be necessary to have the support of the parties in decision-making, given its parliamentary weakness, and if it has not created this forum it is because “it considers “That is not necessary and has other priorities.”
The truth is that the fight against drought is one of the issues that most concern the Government and the main opposition party. In fact, it was one of the issues that starred in the negotiations for the 2023 budgets, where the Catalan Executive and Salvador Illa’s party agreed to promote a series of infrastructures, investments and measures to try to minimize its impact. But many of these measures are delayed and others, the most important, require years to be implemented. This is the case of expansions of desalination plants or the transformation of treatment plants into water regenerators (such as Besòs).
Despite the budget agreement, the precedents in the dialogue between the Government and the opposition did not go well. In March of this year, the drought summit was held between the Government and the parties to try to reach a consensus on the most urgent measures and it ended in absolute disagreement. At the center of the dispute, the sanctioning regime that the Government wanted to promote for municipalities that did not comply with the measures.
Although the Minister of Climate Action, David Mascort, assured this week that the Government does not have in mind repeating the experience to avoid a political “spectacle” like that, the PSC considers that the Government cannot go alone” and that it will need support of the parties to face this crisis.
“We want an agile Government that acts quickly so as not to suffer more than necessary” because “there is so much concern” that “everyone’s efforts are needed to provide all possible solutions,” he stressed. While the Catalan Executive does not consider it advisable to create this forum, the PSC does plan to establish an internal drought monitoring table, which will have deputies and experts and will be chaired by the spokesperson for the sector, Sílvia Paneque, who will meet every week. to monitor the situation and evaluate the actions carried out by the Government.
“We want to be at a water table” because “what will happen when citizens, industries, farmers open the taps and no water comes out?” This is, according to Romero, “the biggest concern of the PSC and what really worries people,” he said.
Given the “inaction” of the Government during the last 10 years, the PSC also intends to review the execution of this year’s budget agreements on water matters. Some agreements that involved investments worth 700 million euros that the socialists consider “not moving forward” as they should.
Although Illa’s party still does not want to negotiate the 2024 budgets until the Government complies with the agreement on the three large pending projects (the B-40, the Hard Rock and the expansion of the El Prat airport), Romero warned that the drought will be one of the issues that the PSC will put back on the table if the next budget negotiation is finally inaugurated, for the 2024 accounts.
In this sense, the spokesperson warned that measures must continue in the field of infrastructure planning to ensure consumption in a territory that experts consider to be “water-rich” despite the current situation.
“We insist so much on building infrastructure because the average water consumption in Catalonia is 180 liters per inhabitant per day, a low figure, if you take into account that the WHO recommends 220 liters.” Therefore, “we Catalans have been responsible, and therefore the burden should not fall so much on the citizens but on the Generalitat,” Romero warned.