It is not easy for a control session to be calm and placid during an election period. The matter is complicated if the Government has just been restructured and changes have been made in three departments of the Generalitat. But it was the post-electoral pacts of the municipal elections in May, the agreement between Esquerra and the PSC in the deputations of Lleida and Tarragona, the trigger for a heated atmosphere in the hemicycle of the Parliament, in the first plenary session that led the new president of the Chamber, Anna Erra.
Albert Batet, president of the Junts group, demanded a rectification from President Pere Aragonès, whom he called a “supervised and unauthorized president” of an “exhausted Government”, and to whom he implicitly suggested that if they do not back down in agreement with the socialists in the supra-municipal bodies call early elections.
“There are presidents who proportionally have lost fewer votes than you and have taken decisions”, said Batet in allusion to the 300,000 votes that ERC lost at the polls two weeks ago and to the general elections that Pedro Sánchez has called for the 23 july “Ask your party to correct it, we still have time and do a deep reflection on whether it is worth enduring this agony”, continued the post-convergence leader, while inviting him to an early call for regional elections. “Consistency is rewarded at the polls”, he postulated.
Batet also criticized the head of the Catalan Executive for talking about articulating a common pro-independence front from the Gothic gallery of the Palau de la Generalitat – “where the big announcements are made”, he stressed – while negotiating with the PSC. “We see that they are not to be trusted, that they always say one thing and do another here in Madrid”, added the post-convergent.
Aragonès’ first reply was to respond with one and you more for the agreement of the Diputació de Barcelona four years ago. “It is understood in the same way that you continue to govern the Diputació de Barcelona” with the PSC, said the president, who then asked not to enter the list of grievances with each other and called on collaborate in the rest of the administrations. “There are clear signs that we must understand each other”, remarked the president, who gave as an example of good will the election of Erra as president of the Parliament just a few days ago and made an allusion indirect to Barcelona City Council.
Of all the chatter about the pacts, on the other hand, there was not a single word from one of the actors involved, the PSC, which dedicated its intervention to education. Salvador Illa, leader of the opposition, extended his hand to Aragonès to conclude a “broad and long-term” pact in the field of education with various forces; and the president picked up the gauntlet. In the monographic plenary session on the subject held at the end of June, you will see how all this crystallizes.
The control session was followed by an intervention by the president about the changes in the Government, which he said should provide energy for the remaining part of the legislature. But the opposition pointed to its “weakness” and management as the main evils of the single-color Executive of ERC.
