In the Palau de la Generalitat there is no trace of the 850 m2 of fabrics from Primo de Rivera’s time that covered the Saló Sant Jordi. Farewell to the Catholic Kings, to Maria Cristina, to Alfonso XIII and to “Por Dios y por España, un alma, un solo corazón”. What has returned to Palau is the honor guard of the Mossos, again with the mausers, to receive Pedro Sánchez, a new Spain with an asymmetrical will, dialogue and promises to strengthen self-government.
The pro-independence pragmatism that the President of the Spanish Government is appealing to in order to shield the legislature has reached Madrid by way of parliamentary arithmetic. Four years ago with ERC, and now with Carles Puigdemont and Junts. The post-convergents agreed on their differences with the PSOE and are now casting a shadow of doubt over the concreteness that the ERC aims to achieve after Sánchez’s visit to Palau. With the work on the Sant Jordi hall, some windows have been discovered that were boarded up during the dictatorship. The trencadís windows offer extra light, and the Republican Government takes advantage of it when management problems are pressing.
The agreements of Sánchez and Pere Aragonès enter into the socialist recipe of concord, but they also feed ERC and, therefore, narrow the margin of Salvador Illa. Beyond the parliamentary staging, ERC takes for granted an exchange of votes on the budgets in Parliament and Congress – if there are no accounts in Madrid, there is no transfer from Rodalies. And if Pere Aragonès is able to capitalize on the income of the fluid relationship with the socialist leader, without noise in the messages and in the management, at ERC they believe that the enticements of the alternative of the PSC may resent it.
The dependence of Catalan independence, the PNB and Bildu means that Sánchez nurtures plurality, the differential facts and sympathizes with self-government wishes that distance the desire for a referendum in Catalonia. It is “plural Spain”. Constitutional Spain. Spain in positive” of the PSOE of Santillana by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, seasoned with the declaration of Granada and watered with the current needs in Congress. Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba defended in 2013 that “there is a right to difference, not a difference in rights” and, after the wounds of the Statute and the process, the “new stage” in relations between the central government and the Generalitat insists on self-government… for whoever wants it.
The multilingualism law, the transfer (with a delay of two years) of the minimum living income, the cancellation of the debt of the autonomous communities with the FLA or the transfer of Rodalies are open doors for all communities. Party slogans are worthless when what is at stake are services to citizens and their operation impacts on regional elections. The PP criticizes concessions to independence, Isabel Díaz Ayuso adds fuel to the fire, but Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla raises his arm to manage his Rodalies. The divergence will be reproduced when the update of the financing system is addressed and Ayuso cannot tell the President of the Board that he can also dump. The income does not allow him that much.
After the agreement of 2009, the socialists have never gone beyond accepting the principle of ordinality to regulate the financing of the communities. That is to say, that the autonomies that contribute the most to the State’s coffers do not see their position diminished when it comes to receiving the resources that correspond to them from the central administration. The financing system has expired since 2014, but there are precepts in the Statute to develop on the matter, such as the State-Generalitat tax consortium. This consortium was to be transformed into the tax administration of Catalonia with the capacity to manage, collect, liquidate and inspect State taxes. Discounting the amnesty law, “reinforcing” the financing of Catalonia, in the words of Sánchez, and complying with the bilateral dialogue in the matter established by the agreements with ERC and Junts is the challenge of the legislature. The unknown is the asymmetry that the PSOE can tolerate and whether moving towards a fiscal pact is as or more difficult than achieving independence.
