Neither with you nor without me. Budget negotiations have their own political rules. It is publicly proclaimed that it is the most important law of the year, the needs of health, education and investment are unanimously appealed to, and then the calendar and the electoral revenue that it can generate in each party are looked at. Horse start, donkey stop...
Pere Aragonès and Salvador Illa met on Thursday of last week at the Palau de la Generalitat to try to unblock the budget negotiations. Aragonès needs to tour his Government in a minority, but with the advantage of not attending to the distractions that coexistence with Junts entailed. And he has raised, as with his investiture, a negotiation of concentric circles. Progress is being made from abroad with the commons formalizing promises –already advanced– in terms of mobility, and an 8% improvement in social subsidies is agreed with employers and unions –a “historic” agreement– with the confidence that sooner than Later, it is the same economic agents who claim the ERC-PSC pact. Nobody wants an electoral call and the budgets prop up Aragonès.
The PSC dodges the pressure – the relationship of the signatories of that pact is more than fluid – and has imposed a convoluted work methodology. He wants an exclusive bilateral negotiation and without submitting his advances to the conditions of the commons or Junts. Faced with the urgency of Aragonès, Illa wants light, stenographers and recognition of the contribution of the PSC. Even for his alternative sellers. Alicia Romero and Jordi Riba are coordinating the negotiation, and Assumpta Escarp joined the meeting yesterday with Minister Natalia Mas and those responsible for Health. Then it will be the turn of Jordi Terrades...
With a collection of scheduled meetings and a confidentiality contract, it will be difficult for the Government's plans to be fulfilled and the approval of the bill in the Executive Council is already on Tuesday the 13th at the earliest. The second week of February is still marked on the calendar as the Ideal for giving the final green light to the 2023 accounts. ERC's objective is for the hypothetical photo with the PSC to maintain the maximum possible distance from the municipal campaign. Partners will immediately become opponents.
On the contrary, that of the Catalan socialists has less to do with the calendar and more with the story. It seeks to protect ERC as a prologue to the electoral cycle and, incidentally, feed Pedro Sánchez's pacification strategy as a banner for the generals. The reform of the Penal Code and the approval of ERC to the general budgets of the State is for Illa an overcome pact that does not challenge him when it comes to addressing the Catalan accounts.
ERC tries to poke its chest for the "achievement" of deleting the crime of sedition and does not rule out refining the new crime of aggravated public disorder to repel the attacks by Junts and the CUP, and quell the alerts activated by Òmnium. About embezzlement, silence is kept. And in silence ERC has been wrapping up its progress in recent months. The 900 million attributed to the budget negotiation in Madrid does not look good for Gabriel Rufián as spokesman in Congress, but the 5 million for the Can Zam neighborhood can be used if you are the candidate for Santa Coloma de Gramenet. The operation is repeated, for example, in Tarragona and Lleida, the provincial capitals that ERC assaulted in 2019. And in all of them the PSC is the opponent.
The Catalan socialists aspire to something more than that fine local rain. There will be no shopping list and, beyond the defense of the Hard Rock complex in Salou, they want to take advantage of the accompanying law to review and incorporate projects and investments that may clash with ERC plans.
Together they play their own game. That of the attempt to consolidate the ideological project. In the executive they are convinced that there will be no agreement with ERC, but making contacts with the Government official allows them to launch proposals to mark a profile and quell the internal noise of recent weeks. The deflation of personal income tax or the succession bonus anticipate the no of ERC but in Palau they see margin in other proposals. Thus, the pragmatic sector of Junts advances satisfied, returning to the field of play after leaving “the box” of the Government and opting for “tickets on foot”. Another neither with you nor without me.
