The Catalan president Pere Aragonès affirms that the elections to the Generalitat will be “when they come.” That is, in February 2025. The statement, made this Monday, seeks to settle speculation about the possibility that Esquerra is interested in an electoral advance to catch Junts on the wrong foot – it has not yet defined who its candidate is going to be – and to avoid losing more distance with Salvador Illa. The polls show the socialist leader as the favorite. If the prediction of the president, Catalans will go to the polls after thorny months, because the drought emergency will make it necessary to activate the emergency phase shortly and impose water restrictions, a complicated management issue for the Government, taking into account the weak majority that Esquerra Republicana has in the Parliament, of 33 deputies out of 135. But the head of the regional Executive reiterates his determination to finish his mandate. He claims that he will be the first president who has completed the full four years of his term in 14 years, since the socialist José Montilla did so in 2010, when he led the second tripartite party. He was succeeded by Artur Mas, Carles Puigdemont and Quim Torra.
Aragonès also assures that the Government will be able to find the necessary partners to approve the third consecutive budget. “I think we will have budgets, obviously,” he responded. president this Monday on Catalunya Ràdio, when asked how the negotiation, already out of date, of the Generalitat’s accounts for 2024 is evolving. “Despite the fact that we are told that we do not have a majority in the Parliament, every year we have approved budgets ”Aragones boasted. Those for 2023 were validated in March.
“Being able to complete an eight-year cycle of presidency, I think it would be positive,” reasons the president. What may come next, we will see. This Saturday, Aragonès received the assignment from the Esquerra leadership to be the headliner in the next elections, but he hinted that there is a plan to hand over to Oriol Junqueras. He will write “pages of glory” in the history of Catalonia, said Aragonès, to refer to the president of ERC. Junqueras is waiting for the amnesty law to come into force so that the disqualification sentence that accompanied his 13-year prison sentence for organizing the illegal referendum of October 1, 2017 can be lifted.
Esquerra says that it does not set limits when it comes to maintaining contacts with other parties, and that it probes complicities with Junts as well as with the PSC. “When you want to be a government party you talk to everyone,” says ERC spokesperson Raquel Sans. Aragonès airs his optimism about the approval of the Budgets, and about the possibility that the mandate could be exhausted, at a time when talks have accelerated to put together a government pact between the PSC, Esquerra and the commons in the Barcelona’s town hall. After weeks seeking a rapprochement with Junts and Xavier Trias, Mayor Jaume Collboni has intensified contacts with the Republicans and with the formation led by Ada Colau. In an interview in Here Catalonia of the SER, the former mayor stated this Monday that “a progressive government in Barcelona is 100% probable.” Trias has described as a “serious error” the “change of will” adopted by Collboni, in tracking down his partners.
Esquerra, for its part, maintains that the good predisposition to form a tripartite in the Barcelona council should not be mixed with the prospects of finding alliances that Aragonès shows to support the last year of his mandate. “There are things that coincide in time,” ERC spokesperson Raquel Sans summarized this Monday.
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Salvador Illa, leader of the PSC, stated this Monday that the socialists want the Catalan budgets to be approved in 2024, as happened last year thanks to an agreement between ERC, the PSC and the commons. Illa sets the condition that Aragonès comply with what was agreed last year or, at least, that he give explanations as to why they cannot be met. The main obstacle in the accounts at that time were the extension of the Ronda Nord, the study commission on the expansion of the airport – already unblocked – and the unblocking of the Hard Rock casino complex in Salou, still pending approval of the urban master plan. . “We want there to be budgets and it depends on ERC and Aragonès doing what they have to do,” Illa demands.
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