The voters of Junts are the only ones who ask to prioritize the 'procés', according to the Catalan CIS

The president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, (c) heads the weekly meeting of the Government, last Tuesday in Barcelona.Quique García (EFE)

The Center for Opinion Studies of the Generalitat (CEO) has published this Wednesday its assessment survey of the Government and public policies and, for the fourth consecutive year, the citizens interviewed suspend both the Catalan Executive (a score of 4.85 out of 10) as well as the central (4.41), although with a slight tendency to improve. Regarding the performance of the Administration, for the second year in a row, the Catalans mostly assure that the Government's priority should be the management of public services (59.5%). 37.5%, on the other hand, believe that it should be the resolution of the political conflict between Catalonia and Spain. The voters of Junts per Catalunya are the only ones who show an investment in that priority.

This is the first survey carried out since ERC landed in the presidency of the Generalitat and since the Presidency department appointed the sociologist Jordi Muñoz as head of the CEO. According to data collected between November 25 and December 15, with a sample of 1,500 people, the electorate of the two parties that make up the Government coalition in Catalonia (ERC and Junts) radically diverge on what the Executive's priority should be .

The crossover between whether the priority should be the Catalan conflict or public management and the memory of the vote shows that it is the electorate of Junts that opts for the first option (61.2%). If you look at ERC voters, it is 35.6%, even below the average for all formations. 63.3% of the respondents who said they had voted for ERC in the last elections believe the focus of the legislature should be on the management and within the Junts only 36.7% have answered the same.

Muñoz recalled that the exchange of priorities corresponds to the explosion of the pandemic. The data for 2016 are the latest that show a pass in the management of the Catalan Executive (5.48) and had its lowest point in 2019 (4.46), but according to the latest data there is an improvement: from 4.78 from 2020 until last December 4.85. The assessment of the Government of Spain also shows some improvement. It is now located at 4.41 points, while a year ago it was at 4.46.

In this assessment of the Executives there are also differences between the partners of the Government. While that of Republicans has grown (from 5.51 to 5.85), that of Junts voters has fallen (from 6.14 to 5.28). That is, in 2020 the followers of the party led by Carles Puigdemont valued the Government better than those of ERC, and now the opposite is happening with Pere Aragonès in power. The survey was carried out during the complicated negotiations to close the Generalitat's Budgets for this year and is the first since the color change in the president's

. PSC and common voters have also improved their assessment.

The survey has focused a bit on the perception of measures against the pandemic and despite the good results (the vaccination process, for example, obtained 7.69) also in other areas, Muñoz has accepted that there is a certain “wear and tear” when talking about the management of the Catalan Administration but that this disappears when it is investigated by specific areas.