The last minute agreement between Junts and the PSOE to save the first decrees of the Government of Pedro Sánchez opens a new paradigm in Catalonia: the post-convergents have negotiated improvements in competences for a Generalitat in which they no longer rule. That is, the party of Carles Puigdemont has achieved the powers in immigration, but it will be ERC who will have to take on the challenge of applying this agreement. How have the Republicans taken it? For now, with distance.
The first to express her doubts was Esquerra’s number two in Congress, Teresa Jordà. She has not denied Junts’ ability to have started some improvements to the PSOE, but has warned that there are still many details to know about the pact. “There is a lot of fine print,” she warned. The case of immigration powers is the clearest. The Statute provides that the Generalitat assumes part of the management, but not all, and it remains to be seen what legal fit the entire operation will have.
Thus, Esquerra suspects that the socialists and the post-convergents have signed the pact without being clear how to apply it. Jordà has ironically stated that his party already has “a certain journey” to agree with the PSOE so it knows that, once the agreement has been signed, it must then be applied. And that’s not always easy. The Republicans claim that they have achieved something more tangible, which is the transfer of the Minimum Vital Income (IMV). A claim with more than two years of experience that will now be a reality.
Of everything the Junts-PSOE pactEsquerra considers that there are only two headings applicable in the short term: suppressing the article of the decree that the post-convergents They considered that it negatively affected the amnesty – and that ERC denies – and the tax incentives for companies to return to Catalonia after having left in 2017. As for the rest – immigration, VAT on oil and the publication of fiscal balances – they consider that it did not there is no guarantee.
Torra’s precedent
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The new paradigm opened by Junts has precedents, but with the roles exchanged with CKD. During the Government of Quim Torra (2018-2020), it was the Republicans who reached some agreements with the PSOE that affected to the entire Generalitat, then led by Junts. The most obvious case is when Esquerra agreed to create a dialogue table in which they should participate the Generalitat and the State. Torra openly criticized him.
There are also other examples during the pandemic in the negotiations on extensions of the state of alarm. The then vice president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, negotiated with the PSOE concessions to Catalonia in exchange for the ERC votes in Congress, which Torra was then in charge of communicating to Sánchez that did not bind the entire Government.