The political pimp-pam-pum over the drought adopts pause mode. At least in the short term. Parliament approved yesterday by a large majority a law proposal promoted by Junts which, together with the amendments negotiated with the PSC and ERC and then approved in plenary, leave behind the failure of the water summit of March 31 at the Palau of the Generalitat. An appointment that caused controversy due to the disagreement on the application of sanctions to municipalities with excessive water consumption. In any case, the proposal went ahead with 100 votes in favor of the PSC, Esquerra, JxCat, Cs and the PP; 15 against the CUP and the commons, and 9 abstentions from Vox.
A complete display of unity in the face of a first-order problem on the eve of the municipal elections on May 28.
The approval of this proposed law modifies the decree approved by the Government that Parliament validated with the sole support of ERC, despite the fact that many of the proposals are similar to the points agreed in Palau. But disagreements have been overcome regarding the investments needed to deal with the drought and, above all, regarding the fines. Despite this, it is not lost on anyone that the PSC and Junts, with this debate, have raised a pulse on the Executive of Pere Aragonès. Jéssica Albiach, leader of the Commons in Parliament, saw it this way, for example.
The president, for his part, assessed that with "this broad agreement" the electoral battle is left behind. And he thanked Junts for the initiative. "But the drought continues, and it is necessary to adopt the same attitude of sum", he warned.
The final formula to reach an agreement was put on the table by the PSC and ERC. The application of the aforementioned sanctions is linked to the call for subsidies by the Government. From the publication of this order, a period of one month is set for the municipalities to apply for the grants. Those who do not claim them and register excessive water consumption will be penalized. In other words, those who show an express willingness to deal with problems in the local network will not be harmed.
With this agreement, the groups avoided the dates for the application of the sanctions. At the March summit, July 1 was proposed as the expiry date of the moratorium. The PSC was against the sanctions, but agreed to recognize them until September 1. There was no consensus.
In any case, there are two points that must be taken into account regarding the sanctioning regime. The first, that this one-month moratorium does not apply to those who do not provide consumption data or do not present a drought plan. Figueres, for example, has been one of the municipalities that has already been sanctioned recently for a drought plan that it has not presented, despite the fact that June 2020 was marked as the limit to register it for the 64 municipalities of the internal basins of Catalonia that exceed 20,000 inhabitants.
The second aspect that needs to be taken into account is that the Government will have to put in the effort to prepare the call for subsidies to the town halls if it intends that the municipalities with little economic capacity and problems in infrastructure and water pipelines put a thread on the needle Government sources assure that the calls will be public in a relatively short period of time, with which the sanctioning regime could be in force, if there are no unforeseen circumstances, in July.
Precisely, the chapter of investments in infrastructures to improve the water utilization and supply network had been erected in a last-minute cliff between the three groups. Broadly speaking, the PSC had presented a plan of 20 urgent and necessary works with a greater level of detail than the list proposed by Junts – with 13 proposals – or ERC – with 8. However, the works suggested by post-convergents and republicans they coincide with those of the socialists, therefore, finally, the three groups have voted for each other's initiatives.
The Government, for its part, already presented at the summit a list of works to some extent coinciding with the infrastructures approved yesterday.
The bill also provides for faster emergency hiring. Equally, an amendment to the PSC is assumed to facilitate action in areas of exceptionality – currently there are 495 municipalities in Catalonia in this state – and that operators can hire quickly, with prior authorization from the town councils.
