The PSOE in Zaragoza has been the first to withdraw the motion against the singular financing of Catalonia and the agreement signed by the PSOE and ERC, which was to be submitted to the plenary session of the City Council of the capital this month. According to sources from the party, the formalities have already been completed and the motion is considered withdrawn. The same is happening with the three non-legislative proposals (PNL) that, for the same purpose, were to be debated in the next plenary session this Thursday in the Cortes of Aragon signed by the PP, the PSOE and the Partido Aragonés (PAR). The three initiatives have been withdrawn.
The reason, in the case of the socialists, is twofold. On the one hand, Ferraz asked the party’s secretary of organization in Aragon, Darío Villagrasa, in a letter to withdraw these initiatives, on the other hand, Jorge Azcón’s PP is seeking an agreement with the entire House and does not want the PSOE to bleed itself dry along the way.
The PSOE of Aragon made clear this weekend in the Federal Committee of the party convened by Pedro Sánchez the internal division that it suffers due to this issue. While the regional secretary, Javier Lambán, continues to be the battering ram against singular financing as he has been against the independence movement, the socialists of Huesca ask for his replacement. The intervention of the provincial secretary of Huesca, Fernando Sabés, was resounding, directly criticizing Lambán without mentioning him, for his continuous disagreements with Sánchez and for using social networks to air them. Sabés asked for agreements and consensus and defended the bilaterality that the Statute of Aragon (Article 108) includes to negotiate its financing. In fact, the PSOE of Huesca brings a motion in this sense to the plenary session of the Huesca Provincial Council this Thursday, asking for a bilateral negotiation for Aragon.
This is not the first time that sparks have flown between Zaragoza and Huesca. But it would have been the first time, if this PNL against the agreement with ERC were to succeed in Thursday’s plenary session, that the unity of vote within the socialist parliamentary group was broken. And this is what they wanted to avoid by withdrawing the motion that the PSOE leadership registered even before the agreement was signed, on June 27, in the Aragonese chamber.
The Socialists were even ahead of the PP’s initiative, presenting their proposal in June and the Popular Party on September 2. Lambán’s Socialists wanted to make clear at all costs their position against the break-up of the single fund and the supposed privileges for Catalonia, as the party already defended when the current regional secretary was president of the community. But now, with the presidency in the hands of the PP since the last elections, and after Lambán announced that he will not stand again to lead the party, the situation has changed in the PSOE of Aragon. The distance with the Huesca federation is already an abyss and, if that were not enough, the advance of the date of the next congresses has brought the atmosphere in Aragon to a boil. This week it was planned to set the voting position on these PNL, but the internal division prevented any possible agreement. The fracture of the PSOE would have been seen live and direct. And this does not interest even the president of Aragon, Jorge Azcón.
The popular leader and head of the Aragonese Executive hopes to lead an agreement in Aragon, in which all political parties will join, to demand funding without privileges and for equality for all communities.
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