Illa’s steep path to investiture

If the path for the socialist Salvador Illa, winner of the Catalan elections on May 12, to reach the Palau de la Generalitat already seemed steep and expensive, since this Saturday the slope has become more dizzying. Esquerra Republicana, whose votes (along with those of the common people) are necessary for the investiture, has announced that it wants to seal a “pre-agreement” in July, to avoid rushing the legal deadline before calling elections, which expires on August 26. Despite the desire for agreement repeated by Illa these days, it now seems more complicated to come to terms with the multifaceted and controversial demands of the Republicans, such as singular financing for Catalonia or progress towards the referendum.

The impetus with which Illa celebrated the first victory of the PSC in seats and votes in Catalonia was tempered as the days went by. The first bucket of cold water came with the pro-independence pact to take control of the Mesa del Parlament, despite not having the absolute majority that they had held in the last decade. Although the Republicans had always separated the negotiation of the governing body of the Chamber from that of the eventual investiture – they will not enter, for the moment, into any Government—, the decision gave the socialists clues that they would have to fine-tune their tone. And make concessions. One of the most important ones took place last Friday: the PSC supported changing the regulations of the Parliament, together with the independentists and the comuns, to include assumptions for remote voting, which will allow voting, among others, for former president Carles Puigdemont, who fled to Belgium from Spanish justice. Last term, the socialists filed an appeal for protection before the Constitutional Court for the delegated vote of former minister Lluis Puig, also a fugitive.

PSC and Junts, the two parties that are flirting with the Republicans to gain their support, offer two formulas of very unequal viability. The left-wing pact has 68 deputies, also counting the Comuns, while the pro-independence pact implies the CUP voting yes and the Socialists abstaining in favour of Puigdemont. Until now, the focus was on August 26, the deadline for holding the investiture session. If it is deserted, that is, if no candidate has the 68 votes, the clock will start to call new elections in two months. Illa said on June 20 on TV3 that “in no case” will he step aside so that Puigdemont can preside over the Government again.

The Republicans are focusing their demands on issues that require the involvement of Pedro Sánchez’s government: from financing to the referendum. There are four and a half weeks left for the socialists, on both sides of the Ebro, to square a highly complex sudoku:

The new financing model. He president In March, Aragonès presented a proposal for a new “unique” financing model for Catalonia based on the Generalitat collecting and managing all taxes and contributing to an interterritorial solidarity fund on a temporary basis. Their objective is to have, they say, “the key to the box” and end a deficit that they estimate at 22,000 million euros. The PSC is not in that orbit: it proposes creating the Consortium Tax Agency, formed by the Central Administration and the Generalitat, which would collect all taxes. The Government, the last time through the mouth of the first vice president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, agrees to negotiate elements of Catalonia’s uniqueness, always within the common regime, without clarifying which ones. Illa has indeed sent signs of wanting to change the ordinality: currently, the Catalans are the third in contributing and are in thirteenth position when it comes to receiving transfers. Rovira defended on Saturday that this issue is the cornerstone of the agreement and that “there are no excuses” for not moving it forward.

The referendum. ERC maintains that the referendum is constitutional. Before the campaign, Aragonès presented a report from the Institute for Self-Government Studies, directed by the jurist and former leader of ERC Joan Ridao, which argues that it is protected by article 92 of the Magna Carta: “Political decisions of special importance may be submitted to a consultative referendum of all citizens,” the precept stipulates. The study does not set a participation threshold but does establish that, in accordance with the Venice Commission, the question should be binary and clear. The PSC rejects any progress in this objective, arguing that it is divisive and that Catalonia, with the results in hand, has turned the page. ERC demands that it abandon this narrative and also recalls that the PSC also actively and passively assured that there would be no amnesty.

The transfer of Rodalies. The first embryo of processes It was, in 2007, a massive mobilization due to the poor state of Rodalies, the commuter rail service in Catalonia. Seventeen years later, the string of breakdowns is almost daily and so overwhelming that many citizens give up taking the train to go to work because it does not offer certainty in their schedules. The PSC attributes the string of incidents to the lack of investment in the last decade. One of the investiture agreements between the PSOE and ERC was the transfer of Rodalies limited in the end to the three regional lines (the R1 in Maresme, the link between L’Hospitalet-Vic-Puigcerdà and the R2 line to Sant Vicenç de Calders ) that do not interconnect other communities or with the border. The common people also demand to bet more on trains as a basic means of transportation instead of highways.

Hard Rock Megacasino. ERC and PSC reproach the commons for having been guilty of forcing the electoral advance for their categorical rejection of the Hard Rock project, in Tarragona, a pharaonic hotel complex with 100 betting tables and 1,200 slot machines. Such an obstacle, during the negotiation of the investiture, has been diluted. From insisting that they will not enter into any Executive that does not stop a project that needs as much water as a medium-sized city of 50,000 people, the commoners have gone on to not even mention it in their speeches. The leader of the ranks, Jéssica Albiach, did not make any reference last week in the plenary session that she confirmed that there is still no candidate for president. There he focused his efforts on a pact to combat the housing crisis. The PSC ranks insist that the project cannot be scrapped (it would be necessary to compensate the developers who already have operating licenses), but the Comuns reply that taxes on the game can be increased to make it unviable. A path that ERC shares.

Housing, education, health and renewables. The last mandate expired with the fall of Aragonès’ decree to regulate the seasonal rental of rooms, which sought to put obstacles in the way of those who tried to circumvent the limitation of the rental price. The PSC abstained and the text fell. Albiach considered it “incomprehensible” and announced that they will demand its recovery to support any government. The Comuns value their six votes and warn that they want improvements in housing policies, education (the recovery of the sixth hour in public schools), health and renewable energy, where Catalonia is at the bottom.

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