Salvador Illa has reached the midpoint of his term with the fulfilled promises of achieving an institutional normalization of the country and stopping excuses and lamentations to seriously address the shortcomings that Catalonia presents. The problem is that when difficulties are raised directly and time passes without them being resolved, it can happen that citizens feel disappointed and go looking for other more novel alternatives. Thus, polls predict a decline of the PSC, a fall of Junts and, on the other hand, an exorbitant growth of Aliança Catalana.
In this context, Illa wanted to take advantage of the opening speech of the political course in Catalonia to introduce messages of confidence and self-esteem, to overcome the pessimism that has settled in wide layers of the population. Riding on the “most ambitious budget that has ever existed in the history of the Generalitat” and trying to close the “best financing system ever achieved by Catalonia,” Illa opened the checkbook to announce his commitment in this legislature to, among other things, air-condition all educational centers and all public residences and also increase public investment in education to reach 6%.
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But beyond these objectives and other promises made, the fundamental idea of Illa’s speech was to try to recover that confidence that seems lost in the country. After years of economic austerity came efforts to achieve independence, while Catalonia suffered from underfunding of the autonomous community and demographics soared due to the arrival of immigration. A cocktail that has brought us here. Illa has spent two years recalling the pending subjects that Catalonia has, and yesterday he put more emphasis on boosting the spirits of the downcast citizens to tell them that there is a future. His speech yesterday tried to be more optimistic than ever and he said, for example, that “Catalonia is a wonderful place, where wonderful things happen.” Now what it would be about is that the country enjoys a management of the Government in accordance with the wonderful country we have.
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