The Government has decided to give a rather indifferent welcome to Pedro Sánchez’s new executive, but that does not mean that it has not already identified the ministers with whom it will have to deal with the most complex issues. With some they already have a long history of agreements and clashes. With others, they barely know each other. These are the five members of the socialist cabinet who, inevitably, will be under the magnifying glass of the Generalitat.
Óscar Puente: Rodalies and the airport
Without much time to settle in office, the new head of Transport is responsible for two issues that have greatly strained relations between the Moncloa and the Palau de la Generalitat: Rodalies and the expansion of Barcelona Airport. With the trains, the new minister should be in charge of executing the comprehensive transfer of competition agreed upon by ERC and the PSOE in the investiture agreement. The Generalitat never maintained good relations with the new minister’s predecessor, the PSC leader Raquel Sánchez. “The work of the previous PSC ministers did not serve to unravel any of the problems that affect Catalans,” they criticize from Plaza Sant Jaume, and add, with some sarcasm, that now in the executive there will be “more ministers from Valladolid than from the PSC”. Puente will be one of them. Aragonès, this Monday in an interview on TV3, already launched this dart: “Until now I have not found differences between the ministers who are from the PSC and those who are not.”
On the subject of airplanes there is not much more agreement either. On the table, Puente will find a recent request from the Generalitat – sent by letter to the outgoing minister – to immediately create a bilateral commission on the future of the airport. “They told us that they would look for a date, but we have never heard anything again,” the Catalan administration indicates.
Félix Bolaños: a fruitful relationship
If anyone in the Government has dealt with the ‘Catalonia Folder’ In recent times that has been Minister Félix Bolaños, who has been in all the sauces. Member of the dialogue table and negotiator of the reform of the Penal Code and the amnesty law, he is one of the ministers with the most relationship with the Palau de la Generalitatespecially with the Minister of the Presidency, Laura Vilagra.
Although they have had strong clashes, such as when the Pegasus case of espionage against independence leaders broke out, relations have been fluid and fruitful on both sides. In the last legislature, Bolaños managed to put the ERC votes at the service of Sánchez’s stability and, in return, the Generalitat achieved two key legal reforms to dejudicialize the ‘procés’.
María Jesús Montero: a bad precedent
The Minister of Finance He is also already one of the ‘classic’ figures in relations between the State and the Generalitat. The last three have left her ministry General State Budgets (PGE) who have successively had the support of Esquerra. Unlike Bolaños, in this case relations seem more deteriorated. In the negotiation of the investiture, the Republicans came to blame her directly for the fact that the conversations with the PSOE they will not advance. “Political agreements always run aground in the Ministry of Finance” was the lament that came those days of the Palau de la Generalitat. She will be in charge of addressing the forgiveness of the debt that has been agreed with the Government and, again, of negotiating the public accounts.
José Manuel Albares: the official status of Catalan
The magnifying glass of the Generalitat will also be on in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, since the task of achieving the official status of Catalan in the European Union ended up on the table of José Manuel Albares. The Government has recognized the involvement and disposition of the minister in this matter, but this relationship can only end well if the final objective is achieved, that is, for Catalonia to be the twenty-fifth official language of the Union. If not, the Government has already made it clear that it does not intend to share the blame.
Ángel Víctor Torres: a deactivated commission
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As in the case of Óscar Puente, the previous relationship with the Generalitat of the new Minister of Territorial Policy is a blank page yet to be written. In the Ministry by Ángel Víctor Torres relations with the autonomous communities will relapse and there will once again be the request from Catalonia to maintain a bilateral deal. In 2022, the Generalitat managed to reactivate the Bilateral Generalitat-State commission, reaching several important agreements that, however, are still pending to be fully executed. In February, it will be two years since the last meeting of a commission that was reactivated with many expectations, but that has run aground again, confirming the curse that was placed on it in 2014 Josep Antoni Duran i Lleida when he stopped being part of it: “I am not able to endure the presidency of an entity that does nothing.”
‘Bonus track’: Defense and Interior
A priori, Defense and Interior do not have to be two ministries with an intense relationship with Catalonia, but ERC expressed this Monday its discomfort at the continuity in the cabinet of Margarita Robles and Fernando Grande-Marlaska, whom it accused of not having ” sensitivity” with “human rights. The Generalitat blames the head of Defense – on whom the National Intelligence Center (CNI) depends – for not having done anything to clarify the Pegasus spy case. She reproaches the head of the Interior for some of his instructions as a judge, apart from subsequent quarrels such as for example over his forceful statements against the Democratic Tsunamia movement supported by Esquerra.