Hard Rock overturned the negotiation of the latest budgets of the Generalitat, promoting the call for elections to the Parliament of Catalonia and also gained prominence in the pre-campaign. This Wednesday Comuns Sumar and the CUP, two possible allies of ERC after 12-M, have harshly criticized the Government for renewing an agreement on the controversial casino while the Catalan accounts were being negotiated.
Pere Aragonès, from Belfast, has limited the text to a document that "updates technical characteristics." On the other hand, in Barcelona the Minister of Territory, Ester Capella, has alluded to legal imperatives: "You have the obligation to process the file. Doing the opposite of processing means that you are prevaricating or entails responsibilities of a patrimonial nature for the governments", Capella said at a press conference.
According to the Directa, the same day that ERC and PSC signed an agreement for the 2024 budgets, the Government signed a document that renews the role of Incasòl, an organization dependent on the Generalitat, in the casino project.
The documentation, which has also been consulted by La Vanguardia, establishes that Incasòl must "maintain the order to formalize the corresponding private and public agreements to acquire and subsequently align at the same price and by direct award" the Hard Rock lands. .
The Government's agreement, signed on February 27, 2024, leaves the previous one of December 15, 2020 "without effect" and renews the role of the Generalitat as an intermediary between the owners of the land and the investors.
At the time, the land transaction was valued at 120 million euros. Government sources report that that value may have varied over this time due to issues such as inflation. They also remember that the Generalitat does not invest a single euro in this project because it only acts as an intermediary.
The anger of the commons over this update of the agreement is great. "In politics you can disagree but not lie. And ERC has lied," reproached the Comuns Sumar candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat, Jéssica Albiach. The commons have registered this Wednesday the request for the president to appear before the permanent deputation of the Parliament to give explanations.
The commons have disgraced that while they were negotiating the budgets with ERC, no one notified them of this renewal of the Generalitat's role in the project that, according to Albiach, "rescues the Hard Rock." "We do not want Catalonia to be the great casino of Europe," he reiterated.
Looking at possible pacts after the elections, Albiach has warned that right now "confidence is deteriorating." "We demand that Aragonès show his face to see if he can rebuild himself," said the Comuns Sumar candidate, who has however maintained that her objective is to achieve a "progressive government that makes progressive policies."
The CUP is another of the parties that was negotiating the budgets with ERC and a political space that can be a partner of the Republicans after the Catalan elections. His number two, Laure Vega, has considered the renewal of the agreement "very serious" in the midst of the conversations about the Catalan accounts.
"We negotiated these budgets and we had no record," he said in an interview on RTVE. According to Vega, in ERC there are "many people" who do not want a model of "constant macroprojects."
The presidential candidate of the anti-capitalist party, Laia Estrada, has claimed that the Government of Aragonès has had "the opportunity to put an end to Hard Rock and not only has it not done so, but it has ordered Incasòl to resume the procedures so that the project move forward".
In the face of criticism, Pere Aragonès has stressed that "everyone knows" that Hard Rock is not his model. "If the project moves forward it is because there is an agreement between private parties," said the president of the Generalitat. "We have limited tools to decide whether to move forward or not," he recalled.
Questioned by the reproaches of the common people, he responded that "in the campaign everyone takes advantage" and recalled that in the frustrated budgets there was not "not one euro" for the Hard Rock. Furthermore, he stressed that the renewal of the agreement that was made public this Wednesday "does not change anything."
