ERC showers its key municipalities with a rain of millions in the budget pact with Sánchez

The great pact to 10 with which the Government has managed to approve the General Budgets for 2023 has many protagonists.

One of them, incorporeal but fundamental, is the electoral call for May of next year.

The municipal elections strongly mark the list of approved investments and in Catalonia, ERC and PDeCAT, the two formations that gave their

the Accounts have been fully used to squeeze every last penny.

Beyond the big projects that make headlines, each group looks for how to pamper their own.

A look at the agreements reveals the map of the great electoral battle.

The Republicans clearly aim to shower with succulent investments the municipalities where they need to shore up their leadership or where they dream of achieving it, such as Santa Coloma de Gramenet (119,289 inhabitants, Barcelona), where five million euros in equipment are committed.

Gabriel Rufián, ERC spokesman in Congress, is the candidate of the Republicans in that town in the industrial belt of Barcelona, ​​where Esquerra obtained 9% of the votes in 2015 and the PSC governs with an absolute majority.

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Catalonia obtains a package of 900 million euros from the State and assumes responsibility for key infrastructures

“In politics you are what you say, what you do, what you defend and above all what you achieve.

This is what ERC has achieved in these Budgets in exchange for its 13 votes”, the spokesman for the Republicans in Congress defended last Thursday when presenting the agreement.

This is divided into two large blocks, which total actions for 1,092 million euros.

The first is the great investment agreement for 900 million, presented last Tuesday, but it is in the second, on Wednesday, where the mental composition of the party led by Oriol Junqueras can be glimpsed, facing the next municipal elections.

There are a total of 29 initiatives (several located in the Balearic Islands or the Valencian Community, where ERC is present) and those that specifically concern Catalonia are estimated at 192 million.

If divided by provinces, Barcelona is the best stop, with 23 million.

It is followed by Lleida, whose 11 million euros will go entirely to a road improvement plan.

Particular care is given to the N-260, the Pyrenean Axis in the section Malpàs-Pont de Suert and Port del Cantó, which has its own departure.

Then Tarragona (seven million) and Girona (1.5 million) are on the list.

Only two towns where ERC does not govern receive investment: Vilafranca del Penedès and Santa Coloma de Gramenet, both in Barcelona.

In the rest, either he holds the mayoralty or is within the Executive.

Hence, it is so striking that one of the comparatively most generous items is five million euros for that second municipality.

This is the socialist stronghold where Rufián debuted in municipal politics as headliner in May.

The grouping of the party in the municipality celebrated on Twitter that the "negotiating force" headed by Rufián was "put at the service of the Colomenses" to have more equipment in the Can Zam park.

In Santa Coloma, the PSC has an absolute majority, with 17 councilors.

CKD, three.

La Seu de Urgell and Figueres, two municipalities with republican mayors and in electoral competition with Junts, especially benefited.

The first, where in fact both formations coexist in the Executive and have divided their time in the mayoralty in two, has a game of one million euros insured for a nursing home.

In the town of Girona, where the Republicans ousted those of Laura Borràs after a great pact in 2019, it now has 500,000 euros to suppress the crossings at railway levels.

Sant Cugat del Vallès is another place where the Republicans put an end to the converging hegemony in the last elections and one of the guaranteed works fully involves them: soundproofing works for the B-30 as it passes through Mirasol and Valldoreix.

surgical strategy

The PDeCAT, which has also voted in favor of Sánchez's accounts, has also managed to irrigate his own, although with a more surgical strategy.

His agreement is more austere, the joint value of the works amounts to 40 million, but the list is much longer, about 50. Even though the largest (18 million) is for the America's Cup nautical event, dozens of municipalities accomplish assignments.

For a town like Gandesa, with just over 3,000 inhabitants (and with a neoconvergent mayor), 400,000 euros in improvements is a great prize.

Specifically, a total of 25 town councils benefit directly, discounting aid to foundations, institutions or specific events.

Of those, 17 are currently governed by Junts per Catalunya (many of them still loyal to the PDeCAT).

In another six, such as Barberà del Vallès or Sant Joan de Vilatorrada, the neoconvergents are not in the municipal governments.

In two cases, they share the local Executive with ERC.

The spokesman in Congress, Ferran Bel, and the leading men in the party (Marc Solsona and Marc Castells) have not neglected their strongholds: Tortosa, Igualada and Mollerusa add up to 3.3 million in budgeted projects.

The new formula for backward infrastructures

Obviously not everything has been to watch over the parish itself.

The big holders of the ERC agreement with the Government are in the first block announced.

In a decision that goes beyond the economic, the pact gives the Generalitat the power to assume the planning and direct execution of works that correspond to the Executive, but that have been delayed for years.

It implies the disbursement of 900 million euros, although 30% will pay for actions already paid for by the Catalan Executive (those of the N-II).

Among the new ones are improvements in connectivity in the AP2 and AP7 (250 million), the promotion of the so-called Pyrenean Axis the N-260 (250 million) and the works in multimodal stations of Rodalies and Ferrocarriles de la Generalitat.

A piece of information that puts these figures in context: For this year the forecast for investment spending in Catalonia was around 1,700 million euros.

The government led by Pere Aragonès now has the entire process on its desk, from the tender to the start-up of the infrastructure, thus putting its own argument to the test that it knows how to manage better than the ministries.

And The central Executive a possibility of, at least, being able to share the blame when criticized for being very far from executing what is projected in the Budgets.

The State budget execution in the first semester of 2022 was close to 16%.

Last year it only reached 36%.

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