The first secretary of the PSC, Salvador Illa, will run for reelection to the party's organizational position with the desire to be the party's candidate for the next Catalan elections. This was announced at the meeting of the national training council this Saturday, which served to convene the 15th ordinary congress of the PSC, which will be held in Barcelona from March 15 to 17 and which will serve to configure the roadmap that will guide the political action of the Catalan socialists during the next four years.
“I am at the service of Catalonia and Spain and that is precisely why I am at the service of the PSC. Thus, on the day we call the congress, I announce that I will choose to repeat in the first secretariat of the party if I obtain your trust,” Illa pointed out in the presentation of his political report.
For that congress, the PSC has already prepared the framework presentation of this new roadmap, in which it expresses its will to govern Catalonia and to do so with pragmatism, what they usually call "useful policy." “Now it's Catalunya” will be the congressional motto that Illa has used to highlight the need to place “the citizens' priorities” at the center of the party's political action. “Now it is time to confirm that Catalonia has turned the page on 10 lost years,” Illa remarked.
The framework presentation will serve to undertake the respective sectoral debates that will serve to define the electoral program with which the PSC will present itself in the next Catalan elections, elections that are initially scheduled for the beginning of 2025 and for which Illa's party does not foresee an advance, at least not significant. In fact, the opposition leader has indicated his objective of “governing Catalonia” but “without haste, when the time is right, with clear ideas and objectives.”
The pragmatism that the Catalan socialists bring to the political debate is related to many of the issues that they have been working on in the Parliament, in their “critical but constructive” opposition work. “Now it's Catalonia, now it's renewable energy, investments to not be constantly looking at the sky (as a consequence of the drought); Now it's security, social justice, the reduction of inequalities, sustainable policies, feminism. Now it is ultimately time to govern,” Illa pointed out.
The socialist leader has placed special emphasis on the lack of investments to address the drought and to address Catalonia's delay in renewable energy as a result of the inattention of successive pro-independence governments. “Which Catalonia do we need, that of President Montilla or the Catalonia that has been emptied and has forced us to pay attention to the sky? Neither water nor energy,” he lamented.
On the other hand, the PSC leader has boasted of the work done to date since he ran for the 2021 regional elections and won, although he was unable to govern. In that electoral campaign, the pro-independence parties raised a cordon sanitaire to the PSC, but that Illa has been collapsing through the pact.
“From the cordon sanitaire in 2021, to being central in Catalan politics, this has been the evolution of the PSC. From having us in a corner, to being the only and main agents of useful politics in Catalonia", to the point that "no useful policy agreement in Catalonia has taken place in recent years without counting on the PSC", he remarked. Illa.
