Catalan President, Pere Aragonès, during his speech for the Diada de Sant Esteve for 2023.GENERALIT
For Pere Aragonès, President of the Generalitat, 2023 will be the year when the possibility of holding an agreed referendum on Catalonia’s independence will be seriously discussed. This was noted in his speech by Sant Esteve, broadcast this Monday, in which he also extols the penal code reforms hatched at the talks table between the government and the Generalitat. Changes that he assured were the result of “persistence” in the negotiations between the two parties. The same virtue he will use to get a vote, which he sees as the only truly “democratic” way to respond “to the political conflict”; an idea the central government flatly rejects.
If 2022 was the year in which the dialogue table between the government and the Generalitat began to bear fruit, 2023 will form the basis for the referendum, argues Aragonès. As in his speech last year in Sant Esteve, the President of the Generalitat wanted to impregnate a certain aftertaste of an ultimatum, although he knew that the government has not repeated it and that, moreover, there are several elections on the calendar The two find it difficult to put parts together . “Perseverance is the key to moving forward. And based on this persistence, today it is evident that the dialogue and negotiations aimed at resolving the conflict with the state are beginning to bear fruit,” he said.
“We were told it was impossible to cancel riot, they told us it was impossible to change the crime of embezzlement,” recalled Aragonès, to later boast of canceling the first and changing the second, which would improve the legal situation of the “persecuted through the organization of the 1-O referendum,” according to the Republican. Despite acknowledging this improvement in the situation of nearly 40 former senior Generalitat officials with convictions or pending trials, the challenge now is to “open a new phase” to “find a solution to the political conflict.” “Find a solution to the state’s inability to respond to the vast majority of Catalonian citizens who want to decide the country’s future democratically, freely and peacefully,” he said.
The Catalan President recalled that he would bet on independence for this vote, but he insisted that it is precisely in a referendum that those who want to stay in the state can also defend them. “Until we give an answer, the political conflict will exist. And it is the responsibility of all parties involved, the government of Catalonia and the national government, to respond to it,” he explained. The head of government has called for shared responsibility after Pedro Sánchez declared the post-criminal code reform trial dead.
The Generalitat, according to Aragonès, will over the next year promote “a great conversation with all of society” about the proposed Clarity Agreement, which the ERC will present at its next Congress in January. This roadmap, with no set timetable, attempts to lay the groundwork for the eventual completion of an agreed referendum. The proposal stipulates that if more than half of the Catalan census takes part in this vote and the yes to an unequivocal question receives more than 55% of the votes, the central government will be obliged to start negotiations in order to agree on the terms of the secession some. For Aragonès, this agreement will provide “all the internal legitimacy to be defended before the state” and be “internationally comparable”. Neither Junts nor the CUP have supported the idea of the Clarity Agreement for the moment, which only blesses En Comú Podem.
In a national key, Aragonès also took the opportunity to ask the PSC and the junts (he must at least both abstain or one vote in favour) to agree to facilitate the approval of the accounts of the Generalitat. ERC has a pre-agreement with En Comú Podem, but due to a lack of support from the Socialists and/or their former partners, accounts have become blurred and the government has been forced to issue a technical extension. The opposition as a whole criticizes that the Republicans, who are in the minority in the chamber, negotiate with “arrogance” and do not do justice to their parliamentary weakness.
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“Most of the work is done. The only thing missing is the political will to make it happen,” Aragonès assured in a speech recorded in the Library of Catalonia. The President recalled that this is the first time that the accounts of the Catalan executive have received the blessing of trade unions, employers and social institutions before they are approved. Among other things, the budget envisages strengthening the healthcare system with an additional 1,000 million euros; strengthens the policy of free education between 0 and 3 years and, after 10 years, releases the extent to which social assistance is provided in Catalonia.
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