Catalonia is about to approve new budgets, if nothing goes wrong in the coming days. The news deserves to be highlighted because in the last fourteen years only five budgets have been approved in Catalonia: those of 2017, 2020, 2022, 2023, and this year. It should be normal, but the fragmentation of political forces makes it increasingly difficult. And if not, just ask Pedro Sánchez, who is on track to exhaust the legislature without having approved any accounts in Congress.
To close this agreement, Salvador Illa has had to draw on patience and generosity to satisfy Esquerra and the Commons. Two months ago he closed the agreement with the formation led by Jéssica Albiach and challenged the republicans by approving the accounts in the Government without waiting for ERC’s approval. Oriol Junqueras held firm and the PSC chose to shelve them to avoid seeing them defeated in the Parliament.
In these two months the bridges have been rebuilt and today we will see the formal signing ceremony of the agreement between the leaders of PSC and ERC. Tomorrow the meeting of the bilateral State-Generalitat commission to endorse the agreements, Thursday a meeting with the Commons, and Friday formal approval in the Consell de Govern.
Read more A new organ begins to beat
All’s well that ends well. Catalonia needs budgets and to overcome the patches of credit supplements. There are many accumulated deficits in recent years in infrastructure, education, health, and social services, and the country needs to move forward. Too many lost years in which the priority was not to manage the country well, but how to advance towards independence. But it is not worth looking back and blaming one side or the other. What is needed now in such a complex situation as the current one is to join efforts and seek the broadest possible consensus and involve civil society.
Budgets are the necessary instrument to bring down to reality many of the good words that Illa has boasted in his first two years in office. It is simply a matter of getting to work. Catalonia needs it.
Read more Illa and Junqueras sign the budget agreement tomorrow at the Palau de la Generalitat
