The leader of the opposition in Catalonia, Salvador Illa, has revealed, almost inadvertently, the reason why the Government of the Generalitat proceeds so slowly in negotiating the budgets: "Now they say: until the matter of Madrid we cannot make budgets in Catalonia”, he attributed in an interview on Catalunya Ràdio. Translation: until ERC does not tie up the reform of sedition and, now, of embezzlement, it will not give the definitive yes to the State budget, and therefore, the negotiation of the Catalan accounts will not be accelerated.
In fact, ERC has never hidden the barter, making the reform of the Criminal Code a condition to give its support to the general accounts and, by extension, to negotiate with the PSC the Catalan ones, even if the continuity of the Government of Pere Aragonès is at stake. So beyond the "exploratory contacts" that have taken place with PSC, Comunes and Junts, no real negotiation on the budgets of the Generalitat has begun to date.
In the Government they admit that the intention is to process the accounts in Parliament before the end of the year, just when the reform of the Criminal Code should be ready in Congress, but they also point out that "the next two weeks will be key". Next Thursday the state budgets will be definitively voted in Congress and ERC has not yet closed an agreement, although the talks should not go so badly when in the presentation report that will be taken to plenary session the Republicans abstained and supported the rest of the votes. of the commission.
The slow pace that, according to PSC, comunes and Junts, the Government prints in the negotiation of Catalan budgets has its roots in Madrid. And the waiting period serves its potential partners to attack the "exercise of political tacticism" of the Government, according to the general secretary of Units per Avançar, Ramon Espadaler -partner of the PSC in Parliament-, or against the "desperate passivity" with which Illa defines the Executive of Aragonès in the negotiations of the accounts.
Although the veto of the Socialists is history, the Government insists on including Junts in the ointment, which can no longer show that there is no possibility of any agreement. "It gives me the impression that ERC is more concerned with wearing down Junts with the budgets than with having budgets," Illa reproached, and the general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, once again showed that the distance with ERC by pointing out that the The "arbitrary" reform of the Penal Code is "the best gift that the 'go for them' could hope for" because its only objective is "to put Puigdemont in jail."
