This week there has been good news in Catalonia. The PSC, ERC, and the commons have reached a budget agreement that will allow a 10% increase in spending and represents a point of stability in Catalonia, after years of shocks and paralysis. In this regard, the reflections offered by two of the main architects of the agreement in separate interviews with our newspaper are interesting: the Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau, and the president of Esquerra, Oriol Junqueras. The PSC and ERC, like the commons, have been able to reach consensus from very distant positions. They have correctly read the critical political and social situation the country is going through and have prioritized agreement over settling into a stubborn and irrelevant opposition.
Read more “Patriotism is shown by agreeing, not by blocking the country”
And this week a series of agreements have also been closed in the bilateral State-Generalitat commission, including the creation of an entity of the two administrations to speed up the execution of public works in Catalonia. Today, the president of Foment, Josep Sánchez Llibre, newly appointed for a third term, rightly complains that the accumulated deficit in Catalonia in recent years for planned but unexecuted works amounts to 50 billion euros. Hopefully, the steps taken this week will help resolve this historic discrimination in basic infrastructure.
But these significant advances have been overshadowed by the National Court’s order accusing former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of leading a corrupt influence-peddling network. Pending the content of the file and the specification of the accusations, and above all, that the socialist leader can defend himself against them, the news causes tremendous wear to a weak government, unable to approve a budget in this legislature as Salvador Illa has done.
Read more Oriol Junqueras: “The PSC lacks ambition and Junts, responsibility”
The consensus reached in Catalonia, which we praise, could fracture in the coming weeks in Spain among the forces that supported Pedro Sánchez’s investiture, depending on how the judicial investigation into Zapatero ends. Given what may happen, the budget pact reached in Catalonia was necessary and, for now, more than timely.
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