Sánchez and Illa take heart from the “useful politics” that has put an end to the ‘procés’ and the right-wing agenda

After showing off what they consider to be his main credentials, Sánchez has called for a “three in a row”: socialists in Moncloa, in the Generalitat and, in this case, in the Tarragona mayor’s office

If there is a concept that has marked the campaign of the socialists, it is that of “useful policy”. This is how they define the management that Pedro Sánchez does from Moncloa and the recipe applied by the leader of the PSC, Salvador Illa, as head of the opposition in Catalonia. An agenda that this Friday, when there are a few hours left to close the electoral campaign, they have claimed as the most efficient to, on the one hand, have left behind the ‘procés’ and, on the other, having turned the page on the stage of cuts, privatizations and limits to the rights attributed to the right. They have done it from Tarragona, where the socialist leadership has supported the candidate Ruben Vinuales in his attempt to recover a historic mayor’s office for the PSC.

“Since we are in government, the Constitution has been complied with everywhere in Spain,” the president proclaimed before an audience that exceeded the capacity of more than 600 people. According to Sánchez, while there are pro-independence parties that want to return “to the Catalonia of 2017” marked by the “disunity and confrontation” there are others who want to return to “the Spain of 2013”, that of “social conflict, inequality and cuts”. Between those two extremes that he has drawn, he assures, are the socialists.

An example of “useful politics”, Sánchez continued, is that of “permanent dialogue” with the Government of the Generalitat and, in turn, with the social agents to guarantee “peace and coexistence”. From here, he has brought up everything from the housing law against those who yearn for the “urban pitch” to the revaluation of pensions, the rise in the minimum wage and the labor reform against those who predict an “economic apocalypse ” which claims that it has not occurred. On the contrary, he has dropped in reference to the PP, there are those who are dedicated to “muddying politics” -a veiled reference to the scandal of buying votes that splashes both the PSOE and the popular ones- to discourage the vote of citizens and with the speech to repeal all laws passed.

Some laws in social and economic matters that Illa has celebrated that have been imposed in this campaign unlike four years ago, when the consequences of the judicialization of 1-O marked the elections. “The winner this time is the useful policy. They have talked about specific problems. This is a novelty because it has not happened for many years,” said the leader of the PSC. A way of saying that, this time, even the pro-independence parties have focused mainly on debates that have to do with the city, country or governance model.

Illa has attributed that merit to Sánchez, but also to his ‘modus operandi’ in Parliament. “Useful politics is the one that approves the budgets, the one that provides more resources in education and health and the one that lends a hand in the midst of the drought. The one that places the common good in the institutions above any particular interest,” he has claimed reviewing the history of actions of the Catalan socialists before the Government of Pere Aragonès.

After showing off what they consider to be his main credentials, Sánchez has called for a “three in a row”: socialists in Moncloa, in the Generalitat and, in this case, in the Tarragona mayor’s office. Viñuales, whom the PSC signed three years ago from the ranks of a declining Ciudadanos, is Illa’s hope to recover the rod in a city where they won by the minimum in 2019, but where it was finally ERC who took the mayor’s office with a pact with the Comuns and with Junts first, to which the CUP later joined.