After the approval this Thursday of the general budgets and the first step taken in Congress to move forward with the repeal of the crime of sedition, the ERC Government only has a third nail left to drive in: the negotiation for the 2023 Generalitat budget is still in the making. Pere Aragonès has many loose ends to tie up and faced with the unknown of Junts, the president temporizes the approach to the PSC. For reasons of political story, the Republicans believe that they should act like this. Going from ignoring Salvador Illa's men to accepting them sitting at the table is a stage and a setting that, in order for his electorate (also the future one) to assimilate, requires raising the curtain as slowly as possible. In this vein it is also that Esquerra accommodates the negotiation with the Catalan socialists with the reform of the crime of embezzlement, which in recent days has loosened the impetus to redefine it. If they get their way in both aspects, ERC will have finished off their dialogue strategy.
As far as Catalan budgets are concerned, it is Esquerra who conveniently manages the tempos. They argue that until the PSC makes a firm commitment to supporting rebates on embezzlement, real bargaining will not be possible. With the reform of the Criminal Code now pending in Congress, the Republicans believe that they have the perfect opportunity to demonstrate it. They trust that they will clear up the doubts that have arisen in United We Can and the PSOE itself to redraw a crime that has to be perfectly outlined if they do not want it to take its toll. What happened with the law of only yes is yes is well present.
But the Catalan socialists are clear that they are only going to endorse the accounts if a good part of the budgets are agreed upon before the Government validates them first in the Consell Executiu and then sends them to Parliament for processing.
Those of Illa have reasons for this: once the numbers enter the Chamber, the possibilities of amending them are reduced, since the income forecasts and the maximum global expenditure are fixed, which this year has 3,000 million euros more than in 2022, and it is not possible to move amounts from one item to another. In any case, where there would be room for modifications is in the fiscal measures. They are contained in the budget accompanying law. But in this matter the coincidences between ERC and the PSC are many and both are committed to introducing the minimum novelties. The IRPF, however, for the moment is not touched.
ERC is in no rush. The extension of the 2022 budgets is inevitable. The calendar cannot be accelerated and the most optimistic version from Government sources is that the Catalan Executive approves them at the Consell Executiu of the bridge of the Constitution and the Immaculate Conception, to approve and seal them definitively in February.
The PSC assures that it is not at all satisfied with the contact it has maintained with the Government up to now. While ERC is advancing remarkably with the commons and they have already talked about energy and housing policies, with the socialists the dialogue is given, but it does not flow. Illa warned Aragonès on Wednesday that trust frameworks are necessary that are broken when his party knows details of the budgets through third parties. On Friday, spokeswoman Alicia Romero admitted "some discomfort" for not having yet received documentation, such as those income forecasts and the increase in expenses in each of the Generalitat's ministries.
On the other side, Together. In the Government they believe that there are few options for an agreement to be reached with the Laura Borràs and Jordi Turull - "and even if there were an agreement, who trusts them now", they admit -, so they hope that the post-convergents announce their rejection before to advance definitively with the socialists.
But JxCat also plays with the times and seeks the opposite: that it be the Government that leaves them on the sidelines. After leaving the Government, they know that one more, than a premature no to the accounts, could electorally favor ERC. The problem for the Republicans in all this strategy chess is that meanwhile the PSC is also playing its game: it has already managed to have the Minister of the Interior, Joan Ignasi Elena, disapproved, and Romero threatened to submit someone else to Parliament for consideration. "It is one thing to offer for the budgets and the other to prop up the Government," argued the socialist spokesperson.
The general budgets, the reform of the Criminal Code and the Catalan accounts are three parallel stories that end up merging into one. La Moncloa has denied time and time again any link between the first two. Republicans, however, do not deny it. They don't claim it either. Marta Vilalta, her spokesperson, dodges the bulge with the formula "we have several negotiations going on in parallel and it is about everything moving forward so that everything can continue moving forward" when, for example, she is asked whether the elimination of the crime of sedition would bring the agreement closer to the PSC for the numbers of the Generalitat. Oriol Junqueras is more of a friend of metaphors and when he doesn't answer that all roads lead to Rome, he assures that all the instruments must tune well on their own so that the orchestra sounds good. It is true that he later stopped playing the violin to affirm bluntly that if the PSC agrees to modify the crime of embezzlement, everything would be easier.
And it is that in a matter of a few weeks, the Republicans have been modulating their story. According to the needs. In August, when Junts was still in the Government, Aragonès dared to say that "it does not make any sense" to agree on the budgets with the PSC, following Oriol Junqueras' maxim that the "PSC's greatest rival in Catalonia is Esquerra". But something creaked at the ERC headquarters on Calle Calàbria in Barcelona when the day after the post-convergents abandoned the ship. Someone made the president of the Republicans himself realize that affirming that in no case would there be a budget pact with Illa could significantly reduce the duration of the legislature.
