President, the country needs budgets”. It is the phrase that Pere Aragonès has heard the most in recent days. Without going any further in the meeting that he held on Friday with the employers Foment del Treball and Pimec. But also in the meetings with the unions or with the representatives of the social entities of the Third Sector. The departure of Junts from the government has left ERC with 33 deputies out of the 135 in Parliament. The accounts could be extended, but the message of weakness and lack of political authority that the president would send is evident and the legislature would have many numbers to truncate next year. On the other hand, obtaining the support to approve the budget would allow Aragonès to caress the culmination of the mandate. To achieve this, all roads lead to the PSC.
The exhaustive veto against the Catalan socialists that Oriol Junqueras launched a month ago has been diluted. The leader of the Republicans said he preferred an extension rather than a pact with the PSC, considering that Salvador Illa's party "is not committed to ending the repression." In reality, the ERC fears that its key to the PSOE will be rendered useless, that Pedro Sánchez considers that the Republican vote for the state budget is offset by that of Illa for the Catalan accounts, thus forgetting about the reduction in penalties for sedition. Also the Junts campaign predicting a left-wing tripartite arouses the misgivings of ERC. But the numbers are what they are and the possibility that the former members will lend their votes to them is very remote.
Junqueras sent to Moncloa that the reform of the Penal Code had to be done before allowing the processing of the State budgets. Finally, he made that position more flexible, but maintains his threat about the approval of the project in Congress, on November 25, although an ERC rejection of these accounts would also mean less income for the Generalitat. The two parties work on the legal modification trying not to mix it with the budgets.
The PP has made it a condition to renew the leadership of the judges that the crime of sedition not be touched, while Brussels is pressing for the judicial conflict to be resolved before Spain assumes the European presidency in July. That factor is an obstacle to face now the change of the Penal Code. However, although discretion prevails, Moncloa and the ERC keep the dialogue open on this matter and these conversations must not go astray, since Junqueras and Aragonès are no longer so blunt when it comes to excluding the PSC from possible agreements. The political calendar allows the ERC to wait to see how the sedition is resolved and decide what to do with the State budgets, since the president has left the debate on the Catalan accounts for later. Meanwhile, ERC will insist on pressuring Junts to give their support or, at least, to make it clear that they are moved more out of rancor than public interest.
Junts avoids slamming the door, but is going to put a higher price on their votes, placing taxation, the Barcelona World project or aid for the ski slopes of the Pyrenees among their demands, which cause misgivings in the ERC and the rejection of the commons , also needed to complete most. Hence, all roads lead to the PSC. The republicans will wait for the outcome of the sedition and the Catalan socialists, for the state budget. Only if everything is resolved favorably, Aragonès and Illa will be able to negotiate the accounts of the Generalitat, whose parliamentary processing would be approved by Christmas and the final vote, in January.
It would be the beginning and the end of the collaboration between the ERC and the PSC. Aragonès would buy time and Illa would go on to exercise a more forceful opposition, with a view to the electoral cycle (municipal, general and regional). The path of pragmatism chosen by Esquerra imperatively requires revenue at the dialogue table, but also budgets that improve attention to a Catalan society more aware of economic uncertainty than of promises of independence.
