The PSC militancy will also have to vote on the Government pact reached with ERC in the Barcelona City Council and which was officially announced on Tuesday night by the executive of the Republican party. The militancy of the Barcelona Federation will do so this Thursday evening, and the socialists have not yet specified the date. According to the pact, the five ERC councilors will join the 10 of the government of Mayor Jaume Collboni. The coalition does not have a majority (which is 21 councilors), but it will give air to Collboni’s team and visibility to the municipal group led by Elisenda Alamany. The Republicans will have two mayoral positions (one in the economic area and the other in social policies) and three districts. Among the responsibilities they will have is the tourism portfolio or the promotion of Catalan.
The mayor has always defended agreements with progressive parties and agreed on the budget with the Republicans, so the PSC will apparently have the support of the militancy. In ERC, there are critical voices, such as those expressed by its youth (opposed to voting anything with the socialists), or the group of Primer d’Octubre militants, but the until recently president of the formation, Oriol Junqueras, has endorsed the agreement .
The Republicans appeared this Wednesday at City Hall and assumed that the militancy will support the pact, so entry will be imminent. The councilor and president of the Barcelona Federation, Eva Baró, has defended the will of the municipal group to “be protagonists and an influential actor in the future of the city.” Baró has pointed out that the party has already debated the issue in the neighborhood caucuses and that it has coordinated “up to the minute” with the national leadership. But neither Baró herself nor the president of the municipal group attended the party meetings last Monday, despite the importance of convening an extraordinary executive and congress of the Barcelona federation.
Councilor Jordi Coronas has also championed the party’s “democratic radicalism” and has stressed that the last word will be the Barcelona militants and not the national leadership, where there are voices that reject reaching an agreement with the PSC. “In recent years, Barcelona has turned its back on Catalonia” and has defended “the presence of a sovereigntist party in the city government, after 17 years, and it will not be because we have not won elections, as happened in 2019.” Coronas has thus argued his desire to enter the Government: “A conservative, comfortable and grateful option is to be in the opposition and approve budgets; The other is to roll up your sleeves and carry the citizens’ backpacks on your back.” “Committing to the municipal government with all its consequences is also taking risks, but citizens expect solutions,” he acknowledged.
The commons criticize the PSC – ERC pact
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The reactions of the rest of the City Council groups have so far been critical of the agreement between socialists and republicans. Sources from Barcelona in common have been “concerned” about an agreement that does not add up to a majority and have recalled that their bet “has always been a tripartite” of the left, including them, which would add 24 councilors and “would allow Collboni’s PSC to be pulled to the left and be able to really condition the policies and the city model.” ERC will not be able to do it, they say and attack Alamany: “It is committed to propping up a servile government with lobbies and private interests, instead of responding to the real problems of the neighbors.”
ERC does not want to share the government with the commons, and hence their haste to enter: to do it alone before a possible tripartite in the Generalitat demanded that they also do so in the town hall. Asked about the issue, Coronas responded that now “the pact is between PSC and ERC”, and that “life is very long”, but that “any change in the future in this government is agreed upon and must have the approval ” of the partners. On behalf of Junts, councilor Josep Rius has warned ERC on TVE that an agreement with the PSC “would mean entering a government that the PP has decided.”
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