When just after the summer Esquerra announced that it was advancing its 29th national congress to January, it did so thinking of rearming itself for the municipal elections in May. But political forecasts are as volatile as electoral promises and this Saturday's meeting in Lleida finally helped the militancy close ranks with Pere Aragonès. The president, in turn, thanked "the maturity" of his party in assuming the contradictions of the budget negotiation with the PSC. Here, a letter and a number: the B-40.
The budget negotiation with the PSC has made the Republicans dismount from their territorial model. The Government has swallowed the B-40 to connect Sabadell and Terrassa. A road project that the socialists put as a sine qua non condition. Reluctantly assuming the road, ERC gains legislature time at the cost of contradictions and wear and tear that the president recognized "political and personal."
Not even the militancy's endorsement of the proposal to set a 50% participation rate to validate a hypothetical independence referendum has managed to overcome the attention paid to the context of the negotiation of the Generalitat's budgets. The social axis dominates the national axis for the first time in years. Both Oriol Junqueras and Pere Aragonès or Marta Rovira appealed yesterday to unity to carry out a clarity agreement to set the conditions for a hypothetical referendum. It is an option that the Republicans insist day and night, but that the Parliament rejected in a vote four months ago.
Back to the most immediate plane, to approve the budgets there are fringes, according to ERC; yesterday for the first time Salvador Illa, first secretary of the PSC, used this same term: fringes. The agreement, therefore, is intuited close despite the fact that there are still some issues to be sealed, such as increases in the neighborhood plan and the Science Law. Or in primary care in Salut. The most notorious is the future of El Prat airport. The text seems almost closed, but those of Junqueras want to avoid the word "extension".
The political paper approved yesterday incorporates a point in which ERC's position is highlighted "against the El Prat airport expansion project imposed by Aena and the Spanish Government". Before it reads: "We do not accept management lessons from those who have always led Renfe and have turned it into the current chaos or defend anachronistic projects such as the fourth belt [the B-40] or the expansion of El Prat airport taxes For the state". Translated: Esquerra compromises with the highway if the budgets are approved, but does not accept the model proposed by Aena to modernize the airport. Negotiations with the PSC resume on Monday.
In the interventions in the Republican congress, the distribution of roles was evident. Aragonès had to thank "the maturity, empathy and understanding" of the militancy in the face of "complex decisions" such as the one made with the B-40, while demanding that the State not treat the independence movement "as minors". Marta Vilalta, deputy general secretary, accused those of Illa of subjecting them, according to her, to "permanent blackmail." Marta Rovira, number two in the party, was a separate case. She touched all the sticks and touched all the crests: to the last pro-independence demonstrations that she considered part of, Junts, the PSC, the Spanish Government.
Oriol Junqueras closed the congress. He did so with a speech in which he valued ERC's commitment to the agreement of clarity and the dialogue process, without also renouncing to breastfeed the achievements at the dialogue table. His speech was full of understatements. He urged the rest of the independence movement, but especially Junts, to embrace the commitment to negotiation to obtain a referendum. "That's why we once again invite all of them to work together, to do it together," he said. The use of "together" is not trivial, in case there was someone who did not feel alluded to. "Why work for a party if you can work for a country," he added about it.
But at the same time that he offered himself, the leader of Esquerra also threw taunts at Junts and Carles Puigdemont. In a sneaky way, true to his style: "We also offer our outstretched hand to all those who want the same goal [independence], but do not know very well how to achieve it."
More devastating were the last words, those that closed the congress: “I understand that there are those who succumb to the temptation of letting themselves be carried away by resentment, sadness, disappointment, bitterness. In some cases maybe because when you don't have a way to go sometimes you wish no one did. But we have it. Rather than getting carried away by bitterness, it is much better (...) to share with us the happiness of work and victory. Welcome to happiness." A happiness that, in his opinion, is achieved by acting in the manner of the republicans.
