A fire brigade went to meet Pere Aragonès on Monday as he passed through Santiago de Chile. Bombers written on the back of the uniform, Catalunya on the helmet and "Salut i Foc" as the motto. The Catalonia Brigade celebrates the Diada, runs the Barcelona Fire Brigade and the Senyera waves at the door of its headquarters in the San Bernardo commune. In the trips of a president of the Generalitat, the size of the flags is a matter of State, it is dissected whether the company of the ambassador on duty is pleasant or a nuisance, and the failure of the hits on the agenda by the internal crises of the country in turn.
Catalan politics has become a guerrilla war and there is no Catalonia Brigade capable of facing so much fire, nor water in the swamps to quell them in full alert for drought and pre-electoral campaign. The PSC and Junts detract from Aragonès' meetings on his Latin American tour and ERC sees "racism and classism" in the criticisms of the post-convergents, the PP and Vox. It's just a line from the script. There are chapters already written about the unforced error of Gabriel Rufián and Minister Carles Campuzano in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, about the Mossos restructuring decree that puts an end to the Trapero era, the lack of consensus around the decree to deal with the drought and “some more that will fall”.
It is the stress test of the parliamentary sociovergence to ERC up to the municipal ones. Ministers on the way to disapproval and marking the man to a minority Government with extra doses of tension. ERC thought to reach the municipal ones exhibiting capacity for action with the budgets of the Generalitat and influence in Madrid with the dialogue table. But he faces a peculiar crossing of the desert. The bell tower of the Sau reservoir and the mass organized by the bishopric of Solsona are images that, in the absence of rain, drown every day any initiative of the Executive of Aragonès. "If you can do something, do it," the agnostic minister Francesc Baltasar begged in 2008 before the Virgin of Montserrat. Experts believe that the current episode of drought is more serious than the one that distressed the second tripartite.
The PSC and Junts have forged an alliance of circumstances for months. ERC controls the electoral button and sociovergence, the parliamentary tempo. There is no prospect of voting, at least until the end of 2024, even more so if Pedro Sánchez holds out after the general elections and the Republican votes are decisive. In the PSC they assume that by voting the Catalan budgets they gave air to Aragonès, but they imposed their story on the Hard Rock, the fourth belt and the airport. They will not ask for early elections. They are preparing to exploit the alternative of Salvador Illa after the municipal ones. It can be a pre-campaign of 18 months, with flying goals in the general and European ones. The first secretary of the PSC is an accredited expert in marathons...
Barcelona is the key to success. Jaume Collboni will cling to the socialist brand, while Xavier Trias hides that of Junts – the former mayor hopes to close his list in a few days – and ERC sees the candidacy of Ernest Maragall suffer. Apart from the capital, the Republicans take it for granted that there will be an exchange of agreements on which there are no longer red lines or reproaches that can withstand a legislature, such as the scarecrow of the PSC-Junts agreement in the Barcelona Provincial Council. The Socialists boast of being the hinge party between the national axis and the left-right, and in Junts they give freedom to local teams.
In the Parliament, Junts is not willing to agree on anything with a Government that they abandoned. And raise the tone. Laura Borràs described the president as "undeserving" for her appearance before the European Parliament delegation investigating the Pegasus case. The letter that the president of Junts sent to Aragonès was not known by the entire management, which counts the days until the TSJC ruling that will mark the future of Borràs. The decisions that can be rushed – substitution in the presidency of Parliament, damage control in his presence in the municipal campaign… – will not be innocuous, since Borràs embodies the antidote to the convergent gene that many aspire to recover. And despite everything, they assure that they are better than when they were part of the Government. In the absence of relevance in Congress, against ERC they live better.
