The general policy debate in Catalonia has served to Pere Aragones will send a message to the president of the Government, Pedro Sanchez, about the negotiation for his investiture. For the head of the Government, the amnesty is not enough to reach an agreement with the PSOE, it is also necessary to reach an agreement so that “Catalonia votes” on his political future. Thus, the ‘president’ has demanded from the socialist leader “courage and determination” to approach the negotiation of this consultation. “The amnesty is not enough […] We must make way for Catalonia to decide its future,” he said, from the Parliament two hours before the beginning of the investiture debate of the PP candidate, Alberto Núñez Feijóoin Congress.
What exactly does the ‘president’ propose? Well then the 2023-2027 legislature serves so that the Generalitat and the Government sit at a table – the dialogue table, for example – to “set the conditions to be able to vote” on “the political future of the Catalan nation.” From here, Aragonès will attend the meeting with his proposal for clarity agreement inspired by the case of Quebec. An agreement that is being drawn up by a group of academics that he himself appointed and whose mission is to propose a path to reach a referendum recognized by both parties, that is, agreed upon. A vote that, unlike consultations 2014 and of 2017, this time it should be able to summon all citizens and not just the independence movement. The Generalitat, in turn, hopes that the PSOE comes to this table with its own proposal.
The importance that Aragonès gives to negotiation with the PSOE It has been seen since the first minute of his intervention before the Catalan chamber. After a brief introduction, he immediately entered the main issue that he wanted to address: that the independence movement has “the key” to the governability of the State and that it has to know how to use. A notice addressed to the socialists but also to Junts, since the votes of the ‘ex-president’ party Carles Puigdemont They are as decisive as those of ERC. “We have the key and we must use it for Catalonia to vote. Amnesty and self-determination. Democracy and freedom,” he concluded. The nod to Junts has included the wish to soon receive ‘former president’ Puigdemont at the Palau de la Generalitat.
We have the key and we must use it for Catalonia to vote. Amnesty and self-determination. Democracy and freedom
President of the Generalitat
For those most skeptical of his approach to self determination, Aragonès recalled that no one expected the PSOE to grant the pardons and in the end they arrived, just as no one expected the amnesty and it is currently being negotiated. Now, therefore, the ‘president’ believes that the time has come for the third and final phase of “the resolution of the political conflict”: the referendum. The Palau de la Generalitat believes that there is a “historic opportunity” to do so. “We have the opportunity to take a great leap forward,” Aragonès stressed.
Despite putting pressure on Sánchez with the amnesty and self-determination – also with the comprehensive transfer of Rodalies and the reduction of the fiscal deficit -, the leader of the Catalan executive has wanted to mark distances from the beginning with Feijóo whom he has described as a candidate “from the right and the extreme right.” It is a way for the head of the Executive Council to concede to the PSOE that, despite raising the bar of its demands, it is not in favor of taking the negotiations to the limit until forcing a repeat election. “Feijóo will fail because Catalonia has defeated him,” he said, recalling the results of the general elections of July 23.
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But Aragonès can not only make a living by putting conditions to Sánchez, since he also has to seek his own support in Catalonia to be able to govern. He now he doesn’t have them. Next week it will be one year since the alliance with Junts in the Government was broken and, since then, he has governed alone and with the only support of 33 of the 135 deputies of the Parliament. To obtain the guarantees that he lacks, it has become clear that he will follow the same strategy as in recent years: present some budgets of the Generalitat expansive to find two formations that are willing to negotiate them and jointly sign up for the social advances that they include.
This Tuesday he announced three: the extension to all compulsory education of the school voucher that the Generalitat gives to families to buy materials; the extension up to 30 years of youth discounts in cultural matters and, finally, the implementation of a language plan to teach Catalan to all workers in the public health system of Catalonia who do not yet master it. Education, youth and language, a way of saying that invites the CUP, Junts, the PSC and the Comuns to negotiate public accounts. Getting your third budgets in three years will largely depend on whether you can exhaust the legislature until February 2025. Otherwise, the pressure from the opposition to advance the elections could become unbearable for the Government.
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Aragonès had warned his people that this Tuesday’s speech would be a long one and he did not disappoint what was promised. More than two hours of intervention in which, for the most part, he has sought to draw on the work that the Government has done for him in the first half of his mandate and to propose what the “Catalonia of eight million“of citizens.
He has spoken, among other issues, of the good export records, the record of memberships of Social Securityof the incorporation of new teachers to the education system and the stabilization of 12,000 interim public workers. Aragonès, in short, claims to be decisive for Sánchez’s investiture in Congress, but he does not forget that he must also find a way to maintain the baton of the Generalitat, although his potential allies – from Junts to PSC, through the Comuns – They attacked the speech and called it “disappointing.”