Two years ago, Jaume Giró did not imagine that he would be a Minister of the Generalitat and two months ago he did not contemplate leaving so soon. In the consultation of Junts per Catalunya he defended continuing in the coalition government with Esquerra, in which he was the head of Economy and Hisenda, but it did not work out for him. He now adapts to the new situation and does not clarify whether he wants to be a candidate or not, although he will travel throughout Catalonia.
What do you do now?
To think, to write and to listen to many people.
Are you considering leaving politics?
No. I think that after more than 30 years in the private sector, from 1990 when I joined Mr. Pere Duran Farell as chief of staff until recently, I have had a political stage that has been short for me and I have the feeling that I have left half. I am not a person who likes to leave things half done. For this reason and because I also see the country at a decisive and transcendental crossroads due to everything that is happening at a geopolitical level in Europe and in Catalonia, I want to give an opportunity to continue in politics. Of the projects that come to me I will try not to take any that is incompatible with this political dedication.
Do you see yourself in the Government again?
Serving the country is the greatest honor you can have. From now on, what I will do is go all over the country, from Portbou to Les Cases de Alcanar passing through Sort, listening to people. I want to listen directly to people to find out what concerns they have, what priorities they think the country should have, listening to people, fishermen, farmers, shepherds, entrepreneurs, businessmen... not just the local Junts groups. I want to dedicate myself to that in the coming months. I also want to do something else: help all the Junts candidates in whatever way I can to win the municipal elections.
What is the purpose of that listening process?
To know the country better, to know better the situation in which we are. At this time we need an injection of self-esteem, we need to recover our pride and we need stimulating projects that reinforce the cohesion of the country and that we return to having that pride of country that we have had and that I do not see at the moment.
Do you see yourself leading JxCat in the upcoming elections? Is your listening related to that?
Now we are not at that point and I tell you that my only intention at this time is to do what I was already doing as Minister of Economy. I used to spend two days a week visiting the country, now I won't be able to do it as Minister, but I notice that many people ask me to do it and therefore I will do it in an orderly and systematic way every week. I don't consider anything in particular because in life doing projects is quite useless, life continually surprises you.
Don't you think that not having a defined candidate penalizes them?
When the time comes, Junts will surely carry out the process that is foreseen in its statutes, some primaries. There are many people with a lot of talent and very prepared, and it will not be a problem.
Should Junts approve the budgets of the Generalitat?
Junts has to raise those reasonable demands and common sense that it considers appropriate at this moment in which it is in the opposition. There is a volume of almost 3,000 million additional euros for the budget. On the one hand it comes from the financing model, the advances and liquidations, and on the other from a good negotiation with Minister Montero to get all the fringes that were necessary and the maximum financial endowment at a time when Catalonia is going through and will continue to have economic difficulties. Therefore, I would prefer the budgets to be approved, but not because they are mine. Structures of departments and items of each department have changed. Would I like them to be approved? Yes, but as I have always said, a country with approved budgets is better because obviously the needs of the people are adequately satisfied with a budget that has already been approved and has been in force since January 1.
With a complicated economic scenario, would it be understood that Junts would say no to budgets?
If in the end they are not approved with JxCat, it does not seem fair to put all the blame on it. Negotiating means yielding and compromising. As far as I know, our proposals will be reasonable and will help the country's economy and its citizens. Therefore, it will depend on Junts and also on Esquerra.
Do you think there should be changes in taxation?
Being in the Government, he was already in favor of some fiscal tweaks. In a coalition government you have to give in and some of the proposals that were made did not prosper. I am a defender of the welfare state and it has to be 100% protected. But that has to be compatible with an adequate and competitive fiscal pressure with the surrounding territories. If not, we lose opportunities. I would like the wealth tax, which Catalonia cannot make disappear all at once due to economic difficulties, to recover the minimum exempt amount that was in 2012, which was 500,000 euros. Today it is at 700,000. On the subject of personal income tax, I proposed with the lowest incomes, just like last year, we lowered one point. The idea this year was to lower half a point more in rents that go up to 12,450 euros so that it drops to 10% because most communities have it at 10% and we had it higher than anyone else. Another measure that was prepared affected the wealth tax for people who come from abroad, so that they do not pay taxes on the wealth they have accumulated before. Now there are scientists, researchers, artists, businessmen... who, if they come to Catalonia, have to pay a tax that does not exist in their country because of the heritage they already had beforehand. But there are not only fiscal issues, there is another very important issue: the concerted school. The concerted school has had its modules and its public aid frozen for years and many cannot continue, they have many difficulties and financial suffocation. And the Catalan model is a model that can be defined by many things, but one of them is the concerted school preserving the quality public school. The two have to coexist, a quality audience with a concerted one. There are many things that can be contemplated in a budget negotiation.
How do you assess the repeal of the crime of sedition?
With prudence. We do not know who or how it will affect, nor what will be the scope of the crime of aggravated public disorder or the interpretation of the judges. The State has corrected one of its greatest democratic anomalies and I have the hope that this, like pardons, although it does not resolve the conflict, will benefit unjustly persecuted people. But with the declarations of Patxi López, it seems that the objective is for European countries to grant extradition when Spain requests it and it is easier to prosecute events such as those of 2017. We are not one millimeter closer to amnesty or a binding referendum. But if one thing is clear to me, it is that we are not one millimeter closer to amnesty or a binding referendum.
What is your opinion of the dialogue table?
The dialogue table was established with two objectives, amnesty and self-determination. In that sense, I do not believe in the dialogue table. I have said it from the beginning, to the point that I was asked if I wanted to be part of the dialogue table on behalf of my party and I said no because I am convinced that with the dialogue table we will never achieve the right to self-determination and amnesty, therefore, it is clear that from this point of view the table has not worked.
Are you against negotiating?
Obviously not. With someone who has a higher power than you, you can only bargain. We say Catalonia, Catalonia… But what is Catalonia? Catalonia is its people. And we have to work for well-being, obtaining everything we can in the negotiation, everything that corresponds. What cannot be is that in a country like Catalonia, with a fiscal deficit of 20,200 million euros each year, in addition to the investment deficit, we cannot bear a greater fiscal pressure than any other community and, on top of that, say that we do not want to negotiate nothing with Madrid. That is unnecessarily condemning citizens to have a bad time. I believe that the only solution and the only way to improve well-being is to assume full sovereignty, but I cannot give up all progress until it arrives. Therefore, for me it is not possible, in any way, to give up advancing well-being in order to defend sovereignty. For one reason, because for many, I think so, the aspiration to full sovereignty is to strengthen the welfare of citizens.
There are those who say in his party that this is autonomy.
That is discussed a lot in public opinion, but we have to understand that Junts is a diverse party where there are sensitivities. In any party of an advanced democracy there are internal discrepancies, with a lively debate. I am satisfied that in Junts there are different sensitivities. At all times, it is necessary to put in the balance what benefits the citizen and what harms him.
Is coexistence possible or is there a risk of splitting?
There is a live debate, but there is internal cohesion. You will not have heard me speak of the split. I disagree that there is a threat of split. If someone says it, I suppose it's because he thinks so and, therefore, it must not be impossible. But it is not on my part or on the part of the majority of Junts.
Does Catalonia need a centrist nationalist party? Can it be Together?
I don't like the term nationalism. I always talk about the sovereignist party. Junts must aspire to the full sovereignty of the country and it has to do so from the central corridor of politics, which is made up of hundreds of thousands of working middle-class people who have a very specific and well-defined idea of a country. It has been lost for many reasons, but I will tell you one: Because of the fallacy of the unity of independence. We have to aspire to the unity of the independence movement and we have to look for it, the one that has sought it the most is Junts, but the unity of the independence movement does not really exist today, it has not existed for a long time. Perhaps it existed during some specific moments of 2017, but today it does not exist and we do not see it anywhere and I insist, who has done the most for the unity of the independence movement and the one who has sacrificed the most has been the political space that Junts represents; to the point of turning their ideological postulates towards those of the ERC and the CUP. I believe that this has also been changing the mental framework of the country. And I think we have to recover that. Before, you spoke of recovering the pride and self-esteem of the country with stimulating projects that mobilize investments and that bring progress and well-being to the country. We have to go there.
He has maintained contacts with the PNV. Relations with the Basque party are not going through their best moment now after the incident in Congress over the national teams.
As a political position in Junts I have not held any meetings with the PNV, but I have a personal friendship with two people from the PNV. In any case, they have not been from my position as Junts. I have a very good relationship with both Aitor Esteban and Mr. Andoni Ortuzar. Junts' relations with the PNV are good and positive and have to be better. What you mention was a concrete, punctual and exceptional episode. I myself spoke with Pilar Calvo and I can assure her that it was a mixture of a misunderstanding of legitimate defense and with all the reason in the world that Pilar Calvo made about changes in the sports law that was interpreted as going against the PNV , but it was not the will of Junts.
The latest CEO barometer gives them bad forecasts.
It seems that the base with which that survey was done is a bit biased in terms of Junts voters. The number of votes in the last elections does not correspond to the results of the last elections. I am not questioning the entire study, I am just saying that the sample is not representative of the arithmetic that exists today in Parliament. Having said that, it is evident to everyone and no one is unaware that it is not the best time for Junts between the end of the general policy debate and the consultation to leave the Government, which is more or less the period in which the work of countryside. If you take a static photo as it is a survey at that time, it is not the best: A party that is in the Government and that decides to march, with all the noise that this entails.
Then came the Dalmases case.
Effectively.
Has that harmed them?
All internal noise harms the party. Do you know what hurts too? Always talk about ourselves. Is very tired. If it tires those of us in politics, imagine how it must tire citizens. I trust that we will overcome this stage and that we will talk about the projects.
Do you think it is necessary to hold a congress in which the different projects are confronted after the municipal elections and that the internal noise is reduced?
I am in favor of congresses being held when they are due, every four years. We have just held a congress with two different days, in Argelers and in l'Hospitalet de Llobregat, and I think that the noise that you raise should subside by itself. A congress does not have to solve the noise. The responsibility of politicians is to settle the dissensions that may exist internally. And put all the generosity and positive sense to solve it internally and not have to bore the citizens or have to be convening congresses every two to three.
Do you see yourself presiding over the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce?
As of today, no. It is a project that has gone ahead and it is an issue that I do not have on the table right now, honestly. The Barcelona Chamber of Commerce is a very important entity, very very important, I think it is one of the pillars of the country. By the way, the Chamber of Commerce has a magnificent study service... and I believe that elections are not yet up, when that comes we will see and I hope that there are highly qualified people to be there. At this moment I don't consider it.
Do you think Xavier Trias will perform in Barcelona?
I hope and wish that Xavier Trias will present himself and that I can vote for him and be the next mayor of the city. Think that beyond his political qualities, people remember a time when the city was doing well and had drive and enthusiasm. There was a project. If you present yourself, you will have the support of many people and of course my collaboration in whatever you need.
¿Se ve most esa candidatura?
I think there are many more people than me to be.
