Pere Aragonès doses the intentions on a national scale in each of the Christmas speeches and seems to be convinced that piano, piano, si va lontano, that it is necessary to go Chinese-Xano. It should be known that by 2022 he claimed to unblock the political conflict through amnesty; by 2023, that Catalan entities and political parties sign a clarity agreement, and this time, with the law of criminal oblivion almost in the bag, but the clarity agreement still to be defined, he asks to start addressing the "second phase ". A stage that ends in a referendum.
"2024 must be the year in which we approach the second phase of the negotiation process with the State, where Catalonia must be able to freely decide its future", assured yesterday the president of the Generalitat during the Christmas speech.
A negotiation that the Government and the Left put on hold until now to ensure the end of "repression" and that resulted, first, in pardons, and then, in the repeal of the crime of sedition, and until having to touch the amnesty
The amnesty law, agreed with the PSOE, cannot be delayed, according to Aragonès. It must be fully effective in 2024 to allow "recovering the freedom and return to Catalonia of the people retaliated against for their commitment to the referendum [of October 1]", he stated from the King Martí depository, in Barcelona.
The problem is that the Government of Pedro Sánchez has assured time and time again that the self-determination referendum to which independence aspires will never happen. The difficulty is even greater if you consider that the proposed clarity agreement has no political support. With tweezers, that of the commons, but the pro-independence formations are divided and more waiting to compete in the next parliamentary elections.
Be that as it may, Pedro Sánchez, during his visit to the Palau de la Generalitat last week, made it clear that a referendum has no place there, but he opened the door to studying new funding.
Aragonés claimed it yesterday. The president wants it "singular", specific, with the full capacity of the Catalan treasury to collect all taxes. This after a face-to-face negotiation between the State and Catalonia. Sánchez proposes a reform, but multilaterally, with all the autonomous communities involved.
In any case, the president of the Generalitat, although he raises national aspirations as an eternal ultramarathon in stages, with the funding he turns on the turbo. In his speech, he positioned this issue not as the beginning of a negotiation, but as an achievement that must be closed before the end of 2024: "It must be the year in which we agree on unique financing with the A state that puts an end to an unbearable fiscal deficit that deprives us of allocating the resources that we already pay - but that are administered by others - to improve health" or "strengthen education".
A whole year, 2024, for Catalonia to win, he said, "the future" it deserves.
Aragonès dedicated a good part of the speech to bragging about the successes of ERC and its Government in the negotiation with the PSOE and Moncloa. The last of which, the transfer of the management of the minimum vital income (IMV), but also the transfer of Rodalies. He also valued the unemployment rate "lowest in recent years" and the incorporation of "more teachers, more health personnel and more police officers than ever". And he valued that, as he said, "more audiovisuals in Catalan than ever have been achieved, a fundamental step, in his opinion, for the promotion of Catalan in the streets, schools or screens".
Aragonès had time in the seven minutes of his speech to refer to the two issues that are undermining his leadership in the Generalitat: the drought and education. The reservoirs of the internal Catalan basins barely exceed 16% and the emergency phase is about to be declared. The president pointed out that it is the "most intense drought ever recorded" and for which he proposed "to continue with investments in water infrastructure". With regard to education, after the devastating PISA report, Aragonès encouraged to dedicate "even more efforts" and to continue working with the educational community.
