"I tell you: if you want, we'll start negotiating; if you want, next Tuesday you can bring a budget to be approved by the Government with the support of my group. And if you want, on January 1 there will be budgets in force in Catalonia, which is what Catalonia needs now, which is what is convenient now in Catalonia". The speaker is the first secretary of the PSC, Salvador Illa, in Parliament on October 19, the day on which Pere Aragonès gave an account of the changes in ministers, a week and a half after Junts left the ship of the Catalan Executive.
At that time, the Catalan socialists were willing to be diligent with the Catalan accounts if the ERC Government summoned them. Now they are not in a hurry. And vice versa, Aragonès has also gone from one extreme to the other, he has lurched and from ignoring them he has gone on to claim them. They love each other, but they don't love each other and in the heat of the courtship for the budgets they have been changing their minds about each other.
Everything makes the Republicans think that the PSC will end up saying yes. But Illa has stopped hitting the accelerator to start negotiating game by game, "without the rush that ERC has now entered". It is a priority to "have good budgets" rather than running to close it as soon as possible, Illa warned on Wednesday The Government presses with the agreements reached with unions, economic, social and cultural agents and the Third Sector. Also with the pact recently signed with the commons, which expects a partner to accompany them by the arm. The Socialists do not admit that it ties them short Aragonés's commitment to all those agents. Of course, they assure that this first agreement with the commons does not "squeak" for them. Even more: in an interview in Abc, on December 4, Illa appeals to responsibility and implies that the budget will go ahead "The day after approving the accounts, the Government will continue to be as weak as it is now," he says.
In any case, the one on October 19 was not the first offer from the Socialists. Also in the Catalan Chamber, during the general policy debate, on September 27, Illa proposed "a budget pact for 2023." "It's a sincere offer," he said. So much so that he extended it: “Isn't it better, in these times, to agree on certain strategic lines, even, if you were willing, for a longer time horizon than that of a budgetary exercise? Do you not believe or do you not believe that this would give more stability to the country? I don't see why we have to give up. I, in any case, offer my disposition, and it will not be for us. It is said”.
Illa recently stated that since August 22 she has been offering to get the numbers out. In fact, she did it a little earlier, on July 30, in an interview with Europa Press. The role of a responsible party that he himself has verbalized goes back a long way. He asked for an agreement with the maximum possible consensus, together with ERC, Junts and the commons, and gave as an example the pact reached by all of them to approve the bill in defense of Catalan.
However, ERC has also played with the times. It would also delight Luis Eduardo Aute. "Yes now, not now, tomorrow is late, today is early and yesterday is over," he sang. While the Republicans were in the Government with the post-convergents, no matter how many elbows they hit, Aragonès had plenty of support from the common people. In this context, the phrase of Oriol Junqueras breaks the wind: "Many of its leaders reddened their hands applauding our imprisonment," he went so far as to say on October 8 of the PSC, blocking the way to any conversation with the Socialists to negotiate the budgets of the 2023, perhaps without calibrating that from then on they were necessary.
The PNV-style bicephaly that Esquerra practice brought order. On Hispanic Day, the president of the Generalitat appeared after an Executive Council –of what they call “nothing to celebrate”- to qualify the words of his party leader. He did not dare to fully open the door of the negotiation, but he did move the handle enough to leave it snug so that Illa, with a single breath, could open it wide. Esquerra rectifies here, but little by little, slowly, so that its militants and their voters digest the step from the resounding no to yes to the budgetary dialogue with the PSC that the Government had exhibited until then.
Something had changed. At the insistence of the press on whether he attested to the words of his leader, Aragonés amended: "The priority is to approve the budgets with the groups that supported the investiture [Junts and the CUP] and the previous budgets [Junts y los comunes] . From here, we will continue working." He asked to go "step by step" and not enter "into speculation." And so much insistence was made at the press conference on this issue that the head of the Government was forced to say that he was referring to "the thirty previous responses."
The person who best summed up Esquerra's stumbles was Illa, a few days ago: "First the offer from the Socialists was rejected, then the Government broke up, later it was said that it was not so bad to extend, then we were accepted as interlocutors, so that in the end now it seems that we are in a hurry ”. The Government summoned the PSC to a first meeting on November 7 – except for the contacts it had had with the former Minister of Economy Jaume Giró. "There is still a long way to go and we will have to press the accelerator," warned socialist sources that day. Illa, however, cooled the agreement in December and did not give an option for it to take place before the end of the year, as the Catalan Executive intends. He proposed sectoring the meetings into six areas and assured that the pact "is green."
Those who did not see it wrong to extend the 2022 budgets were Junqueras and Aragonés. Also on this point, the two rectified the lack of parliamentary support that the Government has -33 ERC deputies. Even the Minister of Economy, Natàlia Mas, during the presentation of the agreement with En Comú Podem, was confident that there would only be "a technical extension of a few weeks".
And it is that some new budgets could guarantee that the Aragonès legislature will be maintained at least until the end of 2023. Illa seems willing to approve them, despite the harshness that the spokeswoman for her party, Alicia Romero, publicly exhibits. He even amends his own: Jaume Collboni, Barcelona's first deputy mayor, suggested that ERC's support for municipal accounts would facilitate PSC's support for those of the Generalitat. Romero assured, however, that the PSC “does not change stickers as other political formations do; We do not market with Catalonia or with Barcelona”.
Now it is Esquerra who strives for Illa to agree on the 2023 budgets, although Junts has not yet been ruled out and continues to negotiate. The veto for 155 is lifted. At least in part. But the Republicans denounce "a delaying strategy" of the PSC "to get noticed." The Socialists have the same deputies as the ERC, reason enough for them to demand an "equal to equal" negotiation. The sectoral meetings have already finished and the Catalan Executive believes that they are in a position to sign an agreement, in the absence of some fringes. But it is the socialists who have the upper hand. It will only slip out of their hands if Junts is ahead of them, by chance.
