The President of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, celebrates a year this week since he took office as head of the Government, the first twelve months that he has governed through a variable geometry to advance the legislature and to which he arrives with the dialogue table , his main project to solve the Catalan conflict, frozen after the espionage case with the Pegasus program.
Aragonès came to the presidency of the Govern after the elections of 14-F and with the pro-independence support, recalls Ep. In fact, in those elections sovereignism expanded its absolute majority in Parliament and achieved what they have called the majority of 52% with which he was invested. However, as he has advanced this first year in office, the CUP has been distancing itself from the Executive of Aragonès, which has had to look for new partners and has ended up reaching agreements with the PSC and the commons.
The investiture agreement between ERC and the CUP included several social and economic measures, such as promoting a pilot plan for a universal basic income and public energy, a pact that sources from the Government assure that it is being fulfilled “widely” and well above the 25% that would correspond to the first year of the legislature.
However, issues such as the candidacy for the Winter Olympics, the Hard Rock project, the relationship with the Government or the management of teachers’ strikes have widened the distance with the ‘cupaires’, something that was certified with the rejection of the Budgets of the Generalitat for 2022.
For this reason, and despite the fact that the CUP continues to defend the need for Aragonès to submit to the issue of trust that they had agreed upon, from the Presidency of the Generalitat they consider that it makes no sense to do so if the ‘cupaires’ continue without providing stability, as they had committed themselves in the investiture agreement.
Faced with this situation, Aragonès has found the support of the PSC and the commons to carry out several projects and decrees, leaving a variable geometry with CUP, socialists and comuns that the aforementioned government sources recognize will be the way to advance the legislature in the coming years, although they refuse to approve large projects with the PSC such as future accounts.
In this way, the Government managed to approve the Budgets with the comuns and the partners of the Executive agreed with the PSC the renewal of positions of the expired statutory bodies, and it became visible again with the proposal to reform the Language Policy Law to make against the sentence of 25% of Castilian, presented by PSC, ERC, Junts and the comuns, although Junts has dropped and it remains to be seen how this matter ends up being resolved.
In addition to the balance to achieve parliamentary support, the relationship with Junts, its government partners, has not been easy either, which has gone through several moments of crisis in this first year: from the negotiations after the elections –Junts even rejected twice his investiture– to more recent clashes such as the agreement on Catalan or the management of the president of the Parliament, Laura Borràs, of the seat of the former CUP deputy Pau Juvillà.
The moment of greatest tension between the partners of the Government was when the president rejected the delegation proposed by Junts for the dialogue table as it was not made up exclusively of members of the Executive, which caused Junts not to participate in this table, as well as the agreement of Budgets with the commons that intensified the tension between the two formations.
In addition, new scenarios are on the horizon that could erode this relationship: first, the election of Borràs as president of Junts, who has been characterized as one of the party leaders most critical of ERC, and then, the audit of the agreement of the pact of the Government that prepares its formation and the possible disqualification of the president of the Parlament for her alleged irregularities when she directed the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes (ILC).
Another folder that can continue to deepen the discrepancies between the partners of the Government is the relationship with the Government of Pedro Sánchez, and it is that Aragonès arrived at the Presidency of the Generalitat with the dialogue table and the commitment to negotiation with the Government as the main flag and maintained this route despite the reluctance it generates both in Junts and in the CUP.
The pardons for the prisoners of 1-O, the first meeting with Sánchez in La Moncloa and the recovery of the Bilateral Commission were the first signs of the reestablishment of relations between the two governments, which was consecrated with the dialogue table meeting on September 15 in Barcelona, in which they conspired to begin negotiations to resolve the Catalan conflict without deadlines and with discretion.
But in 2022 the path of dialogue has become more complicated and the first sign was that the second public meeting of the table, which both governments promised to meet at the beginning of the year, has not ended up coming. Thus, the irruption of the case of espionage against independence leaders has ended up twisting the dialogue, since the Generalitat considers that the Government is not giving the necessary explanations on this matter nor is it assuming responsibilities, for which it has minimized relations with the Executive de Sánchez, has considered the negotiating table frozen until the Pegasus case is resolved and ERC has warned that it may stop providing stability in Congress.
Despite this, Aragonès and ERC maintain the path of dialogue as the priority, although they defend the need for visible results to continue betting on this negotiating table in this legislature. Aragonès celebrates one year as president governing with variable geometry and with the frozen dialog
2
