Starting Tuesday, the Government faces the general policy debate, in which the management carried out in different sectors will be evaluated. Pere Aragonès' Executive will take stock alone after Junts decided to leave the Government almost a year ago. With a minority of 33 deputies, he managed to push forward, with the support of PSC and En Comú Podem, expansive budgets of 41,025 million euros. Without a doubt, progress has been made on some issues this year, but Catalonia runs the risk of falling behind in other areas if it does not act quickly and determinedly.
The future of Barcelona airport remains unresolved two years after the agreement between the central government and the Generalitat for its extension was blown up due to ERC's doubts. During all this time, the Government has not clarified what its project for El Prat is, whether it is expansion, promotion of Reus and Girona or, simply, maintaining the infrastructure as it is, without changes. This lack of definition has caused other groups and administrations to go ahead and lead the debate about the airport. The Government supports Aena's plan, businessmen and civil society have provided possible solutions to increase intercontinental flights, and environmentalism, together with the commons, opposes the expansion. Whether in favor or against increasing the capacity of El Prat, everyone has already explained their model, except the Catalan Executive.
The Government of Pere Aragonès is now focused on reclaiming the management of the airports. But this historic aspiration collides with Aena's current shareholder structure. The airport manager has to measure its steps very carefully because it is listed on the stock market and 49% of its capital is in private hands. How would the market react to a possible transfer?
The creation of the commission between the Ministry of Transport and the Generalitat on the airport is also pending. As a result of the budget pact with the PSC, both parties committed to activating it after the summer. Time is ticking, but the debate does not subside despite the silence of the Government. / Maite Gutiérrez
The drought has allowed Catalonia to regain opposition in Parliament and has shown that the only way to stay afloat in the face of the onslaught of the climate crisis is an agreement. The loneliness of the Government has been visualized, forced at the beginning of the year to modify and delay urgent measures against water scarcity, and among which large fines were foreseen for city councils that exceed the municipal allocations set for the alert phases. The revolt of the socialist city councils, who judged the sanctions excessive and unfair, gave rise to the pactist opposition represented by Salvador Illa.
The decline in reservoirs has activated the instinctive mechanism of mutual accusations. The Government was accused of shielding itself with an attitude of pointing out the municipalities as responsible for worsening the shortage of reserves, while the Catalan Water Agency responds that without coercive pressure there is no authority to intensify savings in the face of reserves in freefall. However, water leaks in the obsolete Ter (Cardedeu-Trinitat) conduit in Badalona hinder that position. Because who fines the water leaks of the Generalitat?
The current shortcomings have their roots in a decade of investment drought. The Barcelona region is overcoming this difficult situation thanks to the desalinated waters and regenerated flows planned before 2008. But to overcome the expected and feared new droughts, the Parliament's pact must be fulfilled and completed with the Blanes desalination plant, promised by the minister. Teresa Ribera. Water can cause crises or prop up governments. Here and there. / Antonio Cerrillo
Minister Manel Balcells manages the largest budget of the Generalitat, equivalent to almost a quarter of the total count, but it is never enough to maintain the level of public health stressed by the pandemic and affected by chronic underfinancing. One of the immediate challenges of the department consists of the signing of the III agreement of the Catalan Institute of Health (ICS), which affects some 55,000 professionals in the public sector, while negotiating the implementation of labor improvements within the bilateral medical table, established after the mobilizations of doctors in January. The greatest efforts of the department are focused on the Plan to Improve Accessibility to the Health System – endowed with 110 million euros – which started in March with the aim of reducing waiting lists in primary school, but also in specialties and in diagnostic tests. In his last appearance in Parliament, Balcells alluded to the need for “a transformation of the current system” to guarantee quality, accessible and equitable care.
According to the department's forecasts, the waiting time to be visited by a reference professional in primary or community care will be five days or less at the end of this year in 70% of cases (52% last December). The increase in this activity has been reflected in specialized care and diagnoses, with more patients and also with a slight increase in waits. Meanwhile, the specter of the deficit of specialists in family and community medicine is raised, which the department intends to alleviate with an incentive plan for this specialty that it will present soon. / Antoni López Tovar
The axes of Natàlia Garriga's ministry are four, which she has been very clear about since she was appointed just over two years ago. The first (and most important) is money: the great objective is to reach 2% of the budget dedicated to culture. The curve is ascending: from 1.15% it went to 1.3% and this year to 1.5%. The commitment is to reach 1.7% next year and 2% at the end of the term.
The map of museums will undergo a reorganization that has to do – although it has not yet been explained – with the signing of Manuel Borja-Villel, who for some is a mere advisor and, for others, the new tsar of Catalan museum policy. A challenge is to increase the number of visitors, either by improving visibility and access, or by improving the exhibition offering. The expansion of the MNAC into a Fira pavilion is also underway.
The second axis is cultural rights, that is, everyone has access to culture, without economic or territorial discrimination. A law must be approved in this regard, which is still pending.
The third leg, linguistic policy, has seen the platforms' offer in Catalan multiply exponentially (which was very low), although a glance at the billboard is enough to see that, here, it is a minority language.
The fourth axis is the audiovisual industry, where Catalonia is below the thriving Madrid and other cities. The great long-term project of the Government is the Catalunya Media City, in Besòs, which would be a pole of attraction for companies and we must see how it would fit with (if authorized) the other, private project, which it has in mind. mind Carlos Slim in Sitges.
In the Government's debt, the scarce legislative initiative in the cultural field, criticized this week by the CoNCA. / Xavi Ayén
The current level of implementation of renewable sources in Catalonia is far from the objectives set in the planning for 2030 (Energy Prospective 2050). The Government modified the previous decree on renewables (from 2019) with a nod to the postulates of the citizen platforms. But that has not yet borne fruit with new wind farms. The four inaugurated in 2022 correspond to old files.
The new wind farm projects in the pipeline total 1,030 MW, when planning for 2030 requires almost 4,000 additional MW by then. In other words, the wind farms in service and in the pipeline (with administrative, environmental or pending authorization) total 2,409 MW when the goal is 5,234 MW by 2030. We are on track to only half meet the objective; and it will be impossible to achieve it unless the Government adopts extraordinary measures. Instead, the proliferation of ground-based solar photovoltaic projects is a window of hope. The total power (between the solar parks in service and in the portfolio) totals 3,486 MW, when the goal is 4,458 MW. Catalonia has experienced a boom in self-consumption, but now there are symptoms of paralysis due to the delay in subsidies, among other factors.
In the near future we will witness the impressive deployment of the three private high-voltage lines (MAT) from Aragon that the central government is endorsing despite complaints from the Generalitat about their environmental impact. In the Government there are two souls: one sees the future invasion of green energy from Aragon as inevitable; the other moves listening to the beats of opposition to the MAT in Tarragona. / A. Cerrillo
The school year began this September in Catalonia with fewer students in kindergarten and primary school, more teachers and the commitment of the councilor Anna Simó to reverse the cuts that have been dragging on for more than a decade. Without more investment it will be difficult to address the pending challenges, which are large and urgent. The main one, the pedagogical one. Every study that is presented on educational performance is bad news in Catalonia. Before the summer, the international Pirls 2021 report warned of the reading comprehension deficit, which places the community at the bottom of Europe, after falling 15 points compared to 2016, double that of Spain and the OECD. Catalan children have more and more difficulties understanding what they read, and if the foundation fails, the rest of the skills cannot be mastered: mathematics and English fell to historic lows in the latest evaluations of the Generalitat, and Catalan also fell back. . The pandemic accentuated the problem, but it cannot be the excuse to ignore a situation that has been going on for a long time. What plans does the Generalitat have? In June, the Parliament set the priorities for the minister: improving basic skills and stopping the high dropout rate, another alarm indicator. Inclusive education, mental health care and the detection of learning disorders such as dyslexia are pending challenges.
At the return of the summer, Simó was expected to have a strategy to address these structural problems, but he limited himself to presenting a plan for school libraries that will hardly solve the problem of reading comprehension. A clear project is urgently needed. It is the complaint of the teachers and is the basis of any attempt to improve results. / Silvia Hinojosa
Rodalies, whose service depends on the Generalitat, continues to be the main problem in the field of mobility and the cause of controversy with the Ministry of Transport, responsible for the infrastructure (Adif) and the operator (Renfe). The usual incidents that affect thousands of citizens are at the center of the debate. At the heart of the matter, the Government's claim for a full transfer persists, which the central Executive denies, an issue that will have its weight in the negotiation for the investiture.
Increasing the capacity of Rodalies is key to improving mobility in the Barcelona metropolitan region. Meanwhile, Territori has a plan in place to improve intercity bus frequencies that is being deployed, but not at the desirable pace. The bus-HOV lanes entering the capital are also still pending. The most requested, that of the B-23, has been unstuck, but it will not be a reality for a couple of years.
A good part of the Government's action in infrastructure and mobility, an area that this year's budget provides with 3,127 million euros, corresponds to the expansion of the railway offer (768 million). And, in this block, the completion of metro L9 stands out, whose works have progressed at a good pace since they resumed a little over a year ago. The forecast is to put into service the section that remains to be done, the central one, of about three kilometers, in 2027. And not with all the stations at the same time.
Finally, the deployment of T-Mobilitat continues, a public transport payment system that has accumulated countless delays and is expected to be completed next year. / Oscar Muñoz
