In recent days, ERC and PSOE have shown their discomfort with the role of the second vice president of the Government, Yolanda Díaz, who publicly ruled out influencing the Catalan negotiations based on the plurinational nature of Sumar. A position that was also defended by the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, the only member of the Executive of Catalonia en Comú. Republicans and socialists blame the commons for having dropped the Catalan Budgets and question Díaz’s leadership in this matter. Meanwhile, from Podemos, always in a critical position with the vice president, they took advantage of this Thursday to slip that, with Pablo Iglesias, this “would not have happened” and the contagion effect of the central government also being left without Budgets would have been avoided.
Relations between ERC and Sumar management are tense. Oriol Junqueras’s party voted against the labor reform in February 2022 and in Catalonia the struggle has an obvious electoral nature, as they compete for a similar electorate. However, this week there have been contacts, although according to sources familiar with the conversations, Díaz always stated that the commons had decision-making autonomy and asked, in any case, that ERC negotiate.
“To think that the fact that Aragonès is not able to carry out its budgets is the responsibility of whether or not there has been mediation by Yolanda Díaz is to start from a mistake. This is a plurinational confederal group. There is never mediation to pressure colleagues to take one position or another in a territorial debate,” insist Sumar sources, who believe that the problem is that the Catalan Budgets were bad for citizens. Also, they transfer the responsibility to the Government, which only obtained the support of one of the eight political groups in the Parliament (the PSC). Sumar also responds to the accusations of the socialist wing of the coalition and shows that it was the PSC that decided not to move. The commons, in fact, are in the process of closing an agreement with Sumar—which holds its first Assembly next week—that avoids interference.
In addition to the electoral call for May 12, the immediate consequence in national politics has been the renunciation of negotiating the 2024 Budgets, a movement that Sumar found out about through the media and which has been called a “unilateral decision by the PSOE.” that they do not share. After Díaz’s party came out publicly this week pressuring the PSOE to include some measures on dependency, permits, taxation and housing, having ruled out the possibility of having accounts this year complicates Sumar’s position in the Government, which needs to assert its role after a few months in which the amnesty has monopolized the entire public debate. Its parliamentary spokesperson, Íñigo Errejón, assured this Thursday that the accounts are not everything: “In the absence of Budgets we have been able to raise the salaries of 2.5 million workers, to revalue the pensions of those who need it most and we will be able to reduce the working day. So there is a legislature and a social agenda,” he defended.
Criticism of Catalonia in common
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After facilitating the approval of three of the last four Budgets in Catalonia, the commons have surprised by maintaining until the end their rejection of the Hard Rock complex, describing it as an outdated project that can serve to generate money laundering, gambling addictions and unsustainable in a drought context. The leader of the commons in the Parliament, Jessica Albiach, emphasizes that five months ago she warned Aragonès that they would demand the stop of the complex until the end, as the party leadership staged on Sunday with Ada Colau, Ernest Urtasun, Albiach and Jaume Asens .
In the PSC they remember that in 2022 the commons voted on accounts that allocated 122 million euros to Hard Rock. But in the same way that the Catalan socialists defend that they now support the amnesty because the context has changed, the commoners affirm that the drought is now much worse than a year ago and that the Hard Rock master plan is about to be approved. “The country model is at stake. We couldn’t get to the elections next year with the urban plan approved and the option to purchase the project formalized. There would be no going back on that,” says a source from the commons in Parliament.
Colau insists that she will not be a candidate for the Generalitat
But there is another force majeure reason: Ada Colau is no longer mayor of Barcelona and does not need the votes of ERC to govern as happened in the past with the exchange of support between the City Council, the Parliament and the Government. Officially, the party denies that this is the reason: “It is false that it is a spite for Colau,” they say and emphasize that “the strategy comes from afar, it is thought out, agreed upon and approved by all the organs of the party.” The party leader confirms that she has not participated in the negotiations of the parliamentary group, but that she supports the decision, which was passed by the Catalunya en Comú executive last Monday. She also insists and remembers that she has said it “a billion times” that she will not be the party’s candidate for the Generalitat.
But relevant people from the party warn: “We no longer have the City Council, we no longer need or care so much about political support.” The same sources are critical of the strategy followed: “It is true that the party is unanimously against Hard Rock and we must establish a profile. But it has been a mistake to focus on a single issue. When you negotiate you have to think about all the scenarios and the outcome of each of the scenarios. It has been measured incorrectly,” they lament.
With the CUP in decline, the commons, stuck in the Parliament with eight seats (the total is 135), aspire to gain space on the left and pass the rake in search of votes for coherence. “If when the left governs we assume the approaches of the right, when are they going to vote for us?” the commons representative asked about the resounding no to Hard Rock. But the decision and its consequences have been questioned by some relevant voices who have never raised their voices like this before. Like the general secretary of CC OO in Catalonia, Javier Pacheco, who on Wednesday called on the networks “to the left not to lose direction” and did not bite his tongue: “We value the drop in Budgets and early call very negatively. Summoning citizens to an electoral binge between May and June does not affect the socioeconomic situation. The left is not paying attention to the risks we have in the face of reactionary and far-right policies that knock on the door of our institutions when what is necessary is to provide answers.”
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