The president of the Generalitat Pere Aragonès receives today in Palau the leader of the opposition, Salvador Illa, to evaluate the possibilities of an agreement for the next budgets. Illa has been offering herself insistently since August, when verifying that the veto that ERC has been imposing on the Socialists since 2019 is cracking. To the successive pacts in Congress and in the Parliament is added the real possibility of an agreement to approve the Catalan accounts after the departure of Junts from the Government, and now, another element: the resignation of the ERC to maintain the veto of the Socialists in the post-electoral pacts after the next municipal ones. Climate change between ERC and PSC in Catalonia could accelerate.
From the socialist territorial organization they confirm to La Vanguardia that their republican namesakes have already let them know that the prohibition to agree with the PSC will pass away after the elections of May 2023. Although the idiosyncrasy of each municipality will have weight when it comes to dictate sentence, this strategic change in the party of Oriol Junqueras can cause the post-election agreements to become "a Vietnam", socialist sources warn. PSC, ERC and Junts will be able to braid agreements without prior ties.
In the current ERC framework program for municipal governments, approved a couple of weeks ago, the party ignores any reference to possible pacts and goes from prioritizing "republican" agreements, according to the 2019 document, to reinforcing its "unapologetic pro-independence" character. before the onslaught of Junts on that flank: "We are the ones of the referendum and the amnesty", they conclude.
From the PSC they do not lose sight of the fact that ERC "is the rival" to beat, but the possibility of agreeing with the pro-independence parties means gaining ground on the political polarization left by the 'procés', a priority objective of the PSC. This strategy is favored by the rupture of the Government because ERC and Junts will transfer their differences to the local arena without complexes, although each municipality is a microclimate with its own breeze. Paradoxically, the socialists also detect that the postconvergents, whom they consider "more pragmatic", will have fewer qualms about agreeing with the PSC, who need to strengthen their role in opposing the pro-independence flaccidity they see in ERC.
The meeting between Illa and Aragonès comes at a crucial moment for the Catalan and Spanish governments. Both are in need of giving stability and continuity to their respective legislatures and there the vitamins that both budgets would offer and the ERC's demand to reform crimes such as sedition of the Penal Code intersect. Although the Socialists insist on "separating folders", the Government publicly confirmed yesterday that it will take a proposal to Congress, a week after the Republicans avoided submitting an amendment to all of the State's accounts. Therefore, despite attempts to separate issues, the negotiations will go on in parallel.
The rapprochement process has been progressive. ERC dropped the Government of Pedro Sánchez in 2019, knocking down its budgets -the second time in democracy that some accounts were rejected at the first opportunity-, but since then it has remained in the investiture block, during the pandemic and after the investiture, abandoning it on a few occasions (in an extension of the state of alarm and with the labor reform). At the same time, the independence action unit began to fail.
The slogan of ERC and Junts before the municipal elections of 2019 was to prioritize the independence agreements, but without reflection in the lists due to the refusal of the Republicans, neither of the two parties fulfilled their promise. The most palpable example was the pact that the postconvergents closed with the PSC in the Diputació de Barcelona. That agreement served the ERC to castigate its former partner, but those of Oriol Junqueras also broke the rule by agreeing with the PSC in forty municipalities (Sant Cugat, Figueres, Platja d'Aro, Abrera, among others), although they allege that in his case it was never to favor a socialist mayor's office.
ERC also made it clear that the veto against Salvador Illa's party was unbreakable in the 14-F election campaign that brought Aragonès to the presidency, but this ban has been softened by deeds during the Catalan legislature. Republicans and socialists have braided, with the help of Junts, agreements to renew the expired positions that depend on the Parliament, to approve the Catalan law in schools, finalize a national pact for the language, and now Illa is trying with the budgets despite Junquera resistance.
