The Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya starts its XV Congress this Friday with its sights set on the May 12 elections called by the Catalan president Pere Aragonès after the fall of the regional budgets. Under the motto Ara plays Catalunya (Now it plays Catalonia), The Catalan socialists intend to renew their commitment to federal means as the best formula against the confrontation of the procés decade. The conclave, which will be attended by 1,300 delegates and 700 guests, is expected to be peaceful and uneventful. The congress will consecrate Salvador Illa, who was elected in 2021, as the first secretary of the party waiting to be officially designated a candidate for the Generalitat. His plan is to keep Miquel Iceta, his predecessor in office, now the Spanish ambassador to UNESCO, as president of the party.
The call for 12-M has unexpectedly turned the congress, which is held until Sunday, into the kickoff of the socialists’ electoral pre-campaign. With all the polls in his favor, which place him as a favorite, Illa will try to cast the shadow of Koldo case, that has put him in the spotlight for his time at the Ministry of Health, do not scratch his chances not only of winning but this time of being able to govern. The pro-independence majority blocked his way in 2021 but now, with ERC and Junts mired in a Cainite struggle, it seems difficult for them to reach an agreement again.
The delegates will vote for the executive on Sunday and María Lluïsa Moret, president of the Barcelona Provincial Council, gains weight as number two. Illa wants to publicly recognize the work of Iceta, with whom he has had differences, confirming him in the honorary position reserved for illustrious members of the PSC such as Raimon Obiols or Pasqual Maragall. Not only that: the former president of Congress Meritxell Batet, who resigned from politics for personal reasons after 23-J, will no longer occupy one of the six deputy secretaries and will be president of the National Council.
Completely aligned with the PSOE, the PSC will open the congress with the speech of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and will close it with Pedro Sánchez in what will possibly be the first act of the electoral pre-campaign and with the amnesty law already in the bag . His political presentation, in which curiously he does not mention pardons or the aforementioned law of forgiveness for now, endorses European values and social democracy and proposes the federalist path as the best fit for Catalonia in Spain while at the same time abhorring the unilateral approach that distinguished the process. “Federalism is the best method for governance in a decentralized and composed State such as Spain that recognizes Catalonia as a nationality and the Generalitat as an institutional system of self-government,” reads the political presentation.
Its commitment, which involves consolidating stability, involves three axes: a new regional financing model “more fair for Catalonia and in solidarity with the rest of Spain; the deployment of self-government established in the Statute and greater decentralization of the Government in the territory. There are, therefore, no mentions of a possible new Statute or a consultation to ratify an inclusive political agreement that so irritated certain socialist barons. Nor is the financing model detailed yet. The congress will be divided into three large areas: socialist proposals for today’s world; a project for Catalonia and another on the statutes. In total, 1702 amendments have been presented to the framework paper.
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Triple victoria electoral
The PSC crowned the triple electoral victory in July by sweeping the 23-J and deploying its territorial power and conquering the mayor of Barcelona in extremis with a rare operation in which the PP and the commons intervened. Convinced that the policy in favor of coexistence will give them returns, Illa has built his alternative with a kind of shadow executive that they call the Alternative government and proposes to turn the page process and look ahead away from “confrontation” and “frivolity” to stop being in the queue in education and renewables and prioritizing security. “I am prepared; The PSC is prepared,” Illa said this Thursday after learning of the 12-M call and the decline of his budget agreement with the president Pere Aragonès after the commons irrevocably refused to accept the condition of the socialists to continue with the processing of the Hard Rock, the largest casino in Europe in Tarragona with 300 gaming rooms and 1,200 slot machines.
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