Cordial meeting awaiting the ERC decision on Salvador Illa. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Acting President of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, committed themselves to “complete” the various agreements reached last year between Republicans and Socialists, in a meeting of an institutional nature, but marked by the uncertainty of the Catalan political situation.
Both presidents met for about an hour at the Palau de la Generalitat, a meeting that took place in the middle of the negotiations on Illa and in which they signed the agreement for the definitive transfer of the management of the Minimum Living Income (IMV) to Catalonia.
According to sources from the presidency of the Generalitat, Aragonès has reiterated to Sánchez that “it is time to act” with a change in the financing system that the ERC wants to make resemble the Basque Concert, but that the Socialists limit themselves to the tax consortium between the Ministry of Finance and the Generalitat that is envisaged in the Statute. The new agreement to increase Catalonia's budgetary sovereignty is one of the knots that must be resolved in the negotiations to invest Illa.
In the joint version released by both leaders in a statement, the Generalitat and the government stressed that the meeting took place in a “cordial climate and institutional normality”.
Both presidents “have addressed the general political situation and other matters of common interest”, in addition to “concretizing and planning” various transfers and pending issues and have committed to working towards “their completion for the benefit of the citizens of Catalonia”, according to the joint government.
Sánchez's first visit to Aragonès since last year comes in a context of uncertainty over Illa's investiture and the fragility of the government. This Tuesday, the Executive reaffirmed that Junts has no problem cancelling projects such as the path of budgetary stability or the immigration law.
Junts intends to make the abandonment of most of the investiture vote free of charge alongside PP and Vox. The movement of Puigdemont's people served to express their discomfort about a possible pact between PSC and ERC in Catalonia and to stop the agreement, since their priority is an electoral rerun in October that would give the former president a new chance to be invested. (now they are not giving him the figures).
Faced with the Junts’ attempt to position themselves, as Convergència has done in the past, as the sole defender of Catalan interests, the ERC has presented in recent days a series of agreements with the government that settle various outstanding debts, some of which have been outstanding for decades. The Republicans have counter-attacked with the formalisation of agreements on transfers and infrastructure agreed in exchange for their support for Sánchez’s inauguration in November 2023.
The first signature Last Thursday it was time: transfer of the first line of Rodalies de Barcelona in January 2025. Next Monday, the second: transfer of the state in total 1,520 million of euros over the next three years to Catalonia for Rodalies, R&D and the management of university scholarships.
The carousel of transfers was completed this Thursday by the Minimum Living Income (IMV), whose signature was blessed by both presidents of Palau and formalized by the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Equality, Elma Saiz, and the Minister of Social Rights, Carles Campuzano.
The transfer of the IMV was a long-standing demand of the Generalitat. This social protection, implemented during COVID for people who have exhausted all benefits, has had many difficulties in its implementation due to bureaucratic problems this is being requestedAccording to data from the department, only 12,529 of the 154,063 recipients of the guaranteed citizenship income supplemented the benefit with the IMV, despite having the right to request it.
At a press conference, Minister Saiz celebrated the “broad degree of development and consolidation of the IMV” and its collaboration with the Generalitat compared to other autonomies which, she criticised, “allocate resources that have nothing to do with supplementing the IMV with the 'autonomous income”.
The minister separated the transfer from the investiture of Illa. “Decisions on Catalonia will be taken in Catalonia,” he said. Minister Campuzano expressed himself in a similar vein: “We must clearly separate the relations between governments from the discussions between the parliamentary groups for the inauguration.” The deadline given by the ERC to the PSC is July 31.