The PSC points out to Aragonès that he must negotiate with them if he wants to complete the legislature | Catalonia | The USA Print

Catalonia definitively gave a script twist to its legislature this Friday with the approval in Parliament of the budgets for 2023 with the votes of Esquerra, the PSC and the commons. With a government supported by a squalid majority of 33 deputies out of 135, the President Pere Aragonès, who was sworn in by a pro-independence majority, has paved the second part of his term with the votes of a triple budgetary alliance that has already been consummated several times in Barcelona City Council and in Congress. The Socialists, however, reject that the pact camouflage a legislature agreement and advise Aragonès that they do not plan to adhere to his government action, that he is in the minority and that he will necessarily have to negotiate. The objective of the PSC, which was also displayed in Parliament yesterday, is to make it clear that the survival of the Aragonese Government will end up depending on the transfers it makes to the Socialists.

He President and Salvador Illa, leader of the PSC, exchanged impressions after the plenary session and the complicity gestures of members of the Government with deputies of the PSC and the commons were visible. However, the Republicans suffered their first shock when Parliament knocked down their amendment to assign a budget item to the pilot plan to create a universal income, one of the star measures of the legislature that agreed with the CUP. The Republicans have already avoided including the 40 million item in the budgets but they wanted to leave the door open to be able to do it later in the accompanying law. ERC inevitably needs the support of one of the two big parties —PSC or Junts— for its proposals to prosper. Neither of them voted in favor. The PSC considers that this office is not a priority, arguing that it is utopian to be able to allocate an income to all Catalans because it would take as many millions, 40,000, as yesterday’s budget amounts to.

The Socialists believe that, in the midst of the morass of budgetary talks, the basic income chapter is only an anecdote but paradigmatic: they say that ERC incorporated it into the accompanying law that they did not agree to. Something similar, they say, has happened with the drought decree, approved on Tuesday by the Government. Aragonès surprised the opposition in Parliament on Thursday when he announced a summit to combat the drought. His feeling is that they continue without being aware of their weakness. “It is convenient that they learn from the lessons of the budgets,” stressed the socialist spokesperson Alícia Romero during the plenary session. “It will be necessary for them to seek agreements without prejudices and priorisms. They have to accept their minority ”, she stated, pointing out new challenges such as drought management and the expansion of renewable energies.

Before the budget agreement, the PSC already regretted that the Government tried to validate the decree-laws without prior negotiation and in fact on one occasion, that of the technical budget extension, Socialists and Junts forced the Government to process it as a bill. The first proof of the soundness of the budget pact will be seen this month: the document plans to make effective in the first quarter of the year the agreement with the Ministry of Transport to finance and draw up the Ronda Norte project in the Sabadell area, a project that causes enormous rejection in the bases of ERC and that the Government assumed to achieve the accounts.

The debate served to verify that ERC’s relations with its former partners and the unity of the independence movement are shattered. Aragonès extended his hand to his old allies but it does not seem that he is going to redirect himself. Junts assumed that the President sealed a new tripartite, the left-wing Government that Catalonia led in the 90s formed by the PSC, ERC and Iniciativa, predecessor of the commons and that had betrayed the majority of 52%, alluding to the percentage of independence votes of the last regional elections. The hostility is mutual: ERC accuses Junts of boycotting most of its initiatives and Junts accuses ERC of having opted for autonomy. Two scenes revealed the disagreement: Albert Batte (Junts) complained in the morning about the laughter that arose on the ERC bench after his speech and Raquel Sans (ERC) was disapproved by the Junts deputies who revolted when he told them that they had approved universal income.

ERC’s break with the CUP, its former parliamentary partner, is absolute. It was the first group that announced that it would support him at the inauguration and now they are at the antipodes. Eulàlia Reguant (CUP) described the Budgets as a “major disaster” because in her opinion they only benefit banks, reinforce the privatization of public services and pay for large out-of-date macro-projects that are contrary to the environment such as the Hard Rock recreational complex in Tarragona , the expansion of El Prat airport and the B-40. “The Budgets are the confirmation of his turn to the right and of having resigned from promoting a social agenda just to govern,” she said.

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