President Salvador Illa and Esquerra have visualized in the control session in Parliament the distance that separates them regarding the future processing of the budgets after the Republicans have warned that they will vote against if they do not comply with the transfer of the management of the personal income tax. The Government, for now in the minority on this matter, will approve on Friday the draft accounts that will begin its irreversible parliamentary processing. The plan will be debated in March in the chamber and there are 15 days left to reach an agreement or not. “This is not the end of anything. It is the beginning of a negotiation. There is room for agreement. I extend my hand to you and ask you to take it,” alleged the presidentt that insists on the need for Catalonia to have accounts to guarantee its government action. Illa will appear in plenary session to report on the collapse of Rodalies and the crises due to the January storms. The request, from Junts, has been accepted by assent.
In his first intervention in Parliament after being discharged from hospital, Illa has placed the emphasis on attracting his partners to the budget negotiation table, pointing out that the Executive has fulfilled more than 70% of the investiture agreements. “As president I fulfill my commitments. I will comply with the personal income tax (the collection) as I have done with the financing model and with the constitution of the new Rodalies company. There is no way around the fact that Catalonia needs budgets,” he argued. At the moment, the Executive has the vote of the 42 socialist deputies and the six of the Commons (the chamber has 135).
Illa’s gesture of reaching out to ERC seems to have had an effect. Josep Maria Jové, parliamentary leader of ERC, has stated that his group is “predictable and coherent” and that it has long been demanding the transfer of personal income tax, signed, among other things, in the investiture agreement and endorsed by the federal committee of the PSOE. “We will not negotiate if there are no guarantees. What good are the agreements if they are not fulfilled?” the Republican asked, stating that the demand is not a whim but rather responds to the need for greater sovereignty in Catalonia in the face of a lack of resources. “If you want budgets, you already know what you have to do. The responsibility is yours. Make no mistake: who you have to pressure is the PSOE; not us.”
Jové never takes advantage of his second turn of reply to which he is entitled and therefore does not usually question Illa in the control session. But this time, for the first time in this mandate, he has done it. After Illa stated that he was extending his hand to the Republicans, the Republican raised his hand, almost surprising the president of the Parliament himself, Josep Rull, who was not expecting his intervention. “We will take the hand,” Jové said then, “but first comply and then we will negotiate.” Ester Capella, spokesperson for ERC, later stated that in Illa’s appearance the “horizon of the country and the Government” will be seen. Jéssica Albiach, leader of Comuns, has ignored ERC’s position and has demanded that Illa – without questioning – invest resources to resolve the conflict with the teachers who have been mobilized for weeks.
Junts per Cataluña will wait for the parliamentary procedure to decide its position on the accounts but from the outset it has attacked Illa whom it demands to appear for the Rodalies chaos and who accuses it of not complying with the mandates of the chamber, such as that of dismissing the counselor Sílvia Paneque or that of taking Renfe to court. Mónica Sales, parliamentary leader of Junts, has delved into the wound between PSC and ERC. “One of the partners does not trust you and goes to La Moncloa to negotiate the budgets. It is a hidden motion of confidence and the confirmation of a failure,” he explained, resorting to one of the measures that they precisely wanted to promote. “It is an incompetent, dependent and now unstable Government.”
Sales has cited the conflicts in Rodalies, between doctors, farmers, fishermen and teachers to describe, in his opinion, the collapse of Catalonia. And Illa has responded with an argument that socialists usually use: that these problems have not suddenly surfaced now but have been dragging on for years. “What we do here must be put in relation to the past and you have a lot to reflect on. When they broke the Government I voted on the budgets. Have they generated all the problems in a year and a half? Paneque has all my trust and is showing his face.”
In addition to ERC, Vox and PP have already confirmed that they will vote on the amendment to all of the budgets. The PP and the CUP, with opposite positions, have referred to the law that prohibits speculative sales. Alejandro Fernández, popular leader, has stated that it represents an interference in private property – “A retired couple with three apartments are speculators?” – and the anti-capitalist, Xavier Pellicer, considering that it will not stop the vulture funds. Illa has defended the future norm and has concluded: “I could be wrong but I am not going to stay with my arms crossed.”
