With his latest investiture agreement, ERC and the PSOE They have renewed their commitment to dialogue and this pact will have its first concretion next Thursday, December 21. That day the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonesand the President of the Government, Pedro Sanchezthey will meet at the Palau de la Generalitat. It will be their first meeting in this new negotiation cycle.
Since Sanchez President was inaugurated this month, the two parties had been negotiating this meeting. From the Generalitat They wanted it to be before the end of the year because they considered that the two governments They have many important issues to deal with. The appointment, finally, closed this Thursday with President Aragonès institutional travel in South Korea.
What will it raise? the Generalitat in this meeting? “It will be an institutional meeting where the main issues of interest will be addressed for Catalonia“, summarize sources from the Government. They do not want to give more clues until the date approaches, but they remember what they have been the main concerns of Aragonès in the last two weeks. Thus, the president fundamentally has two folders to bring to the meeting: one, the political conflict. The other, the day-to-day things of the management of the Generalitat.
The first folder is based on reactivating as soon as possible the dialogue table. That is where the president defends his clear agreement to present the PSOE an agreed referendum. Aragonès is often reminded that the socialists have always opposed this consultation, but he has been answering the same thing for some time: they were also opposed to pardons and to amnesty and the PSOE ended up giving in. He summed it up a few days ago: “The impossible becomes possible when you have a favorable situation“.
The second folder It has many derivatives, but Aragonès in recent months has shown its main interest in two: the transfer of Rodalies and financing. Thus, the meeting on the 21st will be a good time for the Government to demand that Sánchez advance in the question of trains and, also, in the Generalitat’s desire to have a “unique” financing system that removes Catalonia from the common regime of all the autonomies.
The Generalitat remembers that the presidents have known each other and been in contact with each other for a long time, which is why they defend that this meeting should not be a mere institutional contact, but it has to be a well-prepared work meeting. Furthermore, from the Plaza de Sant Jaume they allege that everything the president wants to propose is not only not new, but is part of the investiture agreement signed between ERC and the PSOE. And we must “monitor compliance with the agreements,” they conclude.
A long-standing relationship
Aragonès and Sánchez have been talking to each other for years. The last meeting Face to face between the two was in July of last year at the Moncloa and the last one at the Generalitat was in September 2021. In fact, their dialogue has been key to the ERC-PSOE agreements who have made Sánchez president twice. The first, in 2019, Aragonès traveled to Madrid. The second, just a month ago, was a telephone conversation with which they resolved the last issues of the amnesty agreement.
Although they have been treating each other for some time, their relationship, although cordial, has not been never easy. Both Sánchez on the flank of the right, and Aragonès on the flank of the most belligerent independence movement, have always received pressures so that the agreements between socialists and republicans would not have continuity.
However, each one has been able to exhibit his triumphs. Sánchez has received the stability promised by ERC with the republican support of the last three General State Budgets (PGE). Aragonès, for his part, has been able to exhibit the first steps of the dejudicialization of the ‘procés’: 2021 pardons and last year’s sedition repeal. ERC maintains that, without these two advances, there would be no amnesty now.
The two budgets
Although the two parties hardly recognize it before the meeting, the two presidents have a matter that presses them. Approve their respective budgets by 2024. There is no law that gives more stability to an executive than being able to display new public accounts with which to provide more resources to the respective departments.
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The key issue here is that both parties need each other. The PSOE to ERC in Congress, and ERC to the PSC in Parliament. Neither side wants to talk about an account exchange, but each party has the right to veto the other. That is to say, Aragonès knows that he will hardly have new budgets without socialist votes while Sánchez will not have them without Republicans either.
And for the two presidents they are key accounts. For Sánchez, to begin his mandate by exhibiting a first victory and staging stability for those who predict the ten plagues for having agreed on his investiture with the independentists. For Aragonès too, because they would allow him to exhaust his mandate until February 2025. He would be the first president of the Generalitat to achieve this in a long time. more than a decade.