“We will all have to reflect on why it costs so much” to work out a budget agreement. Salvador Illa's observation after bending the will of his adversary by wresting from him the commitment to execute the B-40 hides what is at stake. The PSC wants to settle accounts with ERC after the transfers in the de-judicialization, forcing it to recognize Illa as a key actor in the governance of Catalonia and making it cede in the application of its country model. A complete turnaround after the long period of the process.
"ERC's negotiating strategy has not been the most skilful or the most successful", summed up Illa's right hand in the negotiations, Alícia Romero, shortly before taking the cat into the water, an attitude that made her conclude that "no The necessary confidence has been generated from the beginning”. But everything changed hours later, when the president, Pere Aragonès, -and ERC- gave in, assuming "the personal and political cost" of accepting the Valles road.
If there is finally an agreement, the cost will have served to make the Government aware of the importance of having stable parliamentary support and to never again underestimate the idiosyncrasy of the PSC, a formation with a Catalan and left-wing identity, autonomous from the PSOE, with which ERC is condemned to compete and collaborate.
The PSC is today the first party in Catalonia, winner of the elections, that sails with the demoscopic tailwind. After the long journey of the procés, it has once again established itself as a primary actor in Catalan governance, with the strength to consign its country model before a Government in an extreme minority.
The B-40 is the paradigm of recognition that Illa is pursuing, who appreciates the "significant step" of ERC and allows it to open the door to an optimistic scenario. "Things can happen," the Socialists now acknowledge, proud of having defeated their rival after months of negotiating tension that reached its zenith with the ERC maneuvers in Madrid to soften up Illa.
Aragonès' direct request to Pedro Sánchez at the Spanish-French summit in Barcelona for the PSC leader to loosen his intransigence did not have an effect. This is demonstrated by the abstention of the Republicans in the central government decree on anti-crisis measures.
The strategy recalls the branchism applied by Jordi Pujol, ignoring the PSC and dealing directly with the socialist government in Madrid, a modus operandi that Artur Mas also applied with José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to close the agreement on the Statute. But Illa brushed off the bravado: "The threat is the most obvious manifestation of impotence."
"Looking for support where it does not belong" is "not knowing how we work," says a socialist source. An ERC "miscalculation" to which the Socialists add at least four others.
The first, having ignored the Socialists for weeks after Illa offered to agree for the first time, in August. Junts, who at that time cohabited the Government, did not dare to do so, and the PSC leader is still surprised that Aragonès let his partner go without first having the accounts tied up.
The second error is attributed to Oriol Junqueras, who the day after the government split publicly ruled out agreeing on the budgets with the PSC, alleging that the party "is not committed to the end of the repression", and opened the door to extending the bills. Junqueras did not move the veto until a month later, when the reform of the Criminal Code was a fact, but the meetings between the Government and the PSC began at a "Caribbean" pace, the Socialists complained. The delay prevented having the accounts in a timely manner on January 1.
The third mistake that the PSC attributes to the ERC is not having begun to negotiate before the State budget and the penal reform were approved in Congress. The price of this reform for ERC was its support for the Government's accounts, but the Republicans lost the opportunity to also include the Catalan budgets in the swap. Illa would have had less room to condition her support.
And the fourth mistake is having tried to cheapen the support of the PSC by first closing an agreement with En Comú Podem and with unions and employers. The Government's objective was to narrow the PSC's margin to refuse to endorse the budgets, but it achieved just the opposite effect. Instead of feeling trapped in the president's web, Illa only saw tangible proof of his negotiating weakness.
If ERC's strategy was based on trying to corner the PSC, leaving it few options to resist the agreement, Aragonès and ERC have failed. The acceptance of the B-40 proves it. The Catalan budgets could only be saved if the ERC agreed to recognize the PSC's weight in Catalan governance.
