Pere Aragonès announced it during his speech on December 26, the day of Sant Esteve: "2023 has to be the year to shape the Catalan proposal for a clarity agreement." Today the President of the Generalitat has confirmed that intention and has begun to deploy a mechanism with which he intends a broad debate in Catalonia that lays the foundations for a self-determination referendum agreed with the Government. So he has affirmed that his Government will shortly make public a series of questions ("around half a dozen") that he will formulate to an academic council so that it can deliberate and prepare a preliminary report. From here and on the basis of this document, a social debate will be opened with a first aspect: the president will convene a party table just after the municipal elections on May 28.
Aragonès already outlined 2023 as a year of transition in the national axis, aware of the difficulty of advancing in this aspect with the electoral calls, with some general ones as well, scheduled for the end of the year or the beginning of 2024. Likewise, the dialogue table between the Spanish and Catalan governments continues to gather dust. But the Catalan president does not want to remain with his arms crossed and has decided to grease the Catalan part of the clarity agreement process, the stage would go just before formally presenting the Catalan proposal to the Government of the day, whether led by the PSOE or by the pp.
The sequence of the Catalan process for drawing up the clarity agreement is circular, with a beginning and an end in the Government. The ERC Executive will soon approve the questions that it will send to an academic council that will start this April. However, during today's press conference after the Consell Executiu, Aragonès has not given any clues about its content. Neither the number nor the names of the experts from among personalities of the social and legal sciences from different universities in Catalonia that will make up the council.
After the first report established by the experts, it will be the turn of the social debate. Here there are three spheres: the party table that the Government intends to convene in June; the sectoral debate, which needs time to articulate but which will begin to take shape in parallel to the activity of the political parties and which would encompass an endless number of social and cultural entities, as well as platforms and other associations, and a last area, that of the debate on unorganized citizenry.
The latter, the Catalan Executive foresees that it can be given after the summer in eight circles of 100 different people chosen "by lottery", coinciding with the eight veguerías that make up Catalonia (Metropolitan area - with capital in Barcelona - Alt Pirineu and Aran, Camp of Tarragona, Central Comarques, Girona Comarques, Ponent, Terres de l'Ebre, and Penedès).
Once this entire process is finished, a final final report with the conclusions would be created, with which the question of the clarity agreement would land again in the Government so that it can transfer it to the State Government at the beginning of 2024.
It is a process, that of the clarity agreement that will see multiple difficulties, if one takes into account that when Aragonès raised it for the first time, in September, he was born lame. The same day, Junts asked him for a question of confidence, which the president rejected and which led to the departure of the post-convergent government. In addition, three days later, the commons presented a motion in this regard in Parliament that was rejected. He only obtained the support of Esquerra.
Even so, the president intends to respond to the "broad majority" of Catalan society that wants to decide the future of Catalonia, located around 80%, according to some polls. Or in other words, he seeks to translate this consensus to which he refers into a concrete political proposal aimed at resolving a political conflict that the Government of Pedro Sánchez recognized during the dialogue table, today in hibernation. as little.
"All political forces must be interested in resolving the political conflict with the State," Aragonès said today. "There is a blockade and there is no one who is satisfied with the current situation," he added, for which he has appealed "to responsibility." In any case, he has challenged the parties to refuse to sit around the party table that he plans to convene: "What independentist can be against the Catalan referendum proposal (...). If you reject a solution it is because you have other…". "Let's hope that the group of political parties think more about the future of the country" than about party interests, he has concluded.
