The Catalan budgets are seeing the green light.
Esquerra Republicana and the PSC have an agreement on track to close the approval of the Generalitat's accounts for 2024 and are throwing the ball into the commons' court to get them to join the pact.
The two forces have already hinted this Monday that negotiations are very advanced and that an agreement may be imminent.
The Republican Raquel Sans has predicted that this will be the week of the budgets and the socialist Èlia Tortolero has taken refuge in the discretion of the negotiations, but has accepted the commitment of Pere Aragonès in the Parliament to validate the Hard Rock project, which the commons oppose.
With the foreseeable agreement, the two partners are preparing to close a soap opera that has been dragging on for months and that reissues the pact from a year ago.
PSC and ERC, which have already signed the 2023 accounts, together have 66 seats and are two away from the absolute majority.
The common people radically reject the megacasino and demand that the project be archived or definitively buried now that Catalonia is suffering the worst drought in its history.
The leader of the commons, Jéssica Albiach, already warned on Sunday, in an interview in EL PAÍS, that if Aragonès likes Hard Rock so much, he should look for other majorities.
The commons have facilitated the approval of the last three budgets.
The first secretary of the PSC, Salvador Illa, during a plenary session. Quique García (EFE)
The imminent agreement gives air to Aragonès who has proposed to exhaust the legislature, which expires in February 2025, despite governing with a slim majority of 33 seats out of 135. Salvador Illa, leader of the PSC, always assures that he does not "mix folders" , but the PSOE is confident that the Republicans will support the General Budgets in Congress, as already happened in 2023. In his last appearances in Parliament, Aragonès has had to listen to a flurry of criticism due to the fact that at the end of February the Budget remains pending approval.
“After months of negotiation, this week should serve to advance the agreement,” Sans predicted.
ERC has tried to send conciliatory messages to the common people, opposed to spending even one euro on the Hard Rock complex, without upsetting the PSC, which defends the project.
“We are not in the phase of Hard Rock yes or Hard Rock no,” they argue from ERC and emphasizes that the only alternative the Government has at this point is to “continue with the processing” of the megacasino.
Last week, Illa already began to send messages that showed his willingness to approve the budgets and that coincided with the budget agreement between Jaume Collboni and ERC in Barcelona City Council, where they do not have a majority either.
On Monday he said that it would be very difficult for him to “vote against” the accounts and on Wednesday, in the control session, Aragonès already warned the commoners, almost resigned, that in the chamber there was not a majority against the macrocasino and that they should not sacrificing the accounts that foresee an increase in spending of 2,000 million euros.
He did not say more, but three days later, he considered it enough to consider the 2023 promises fulfilled with the extension of the B-40, the airport expansion commission and the Hard Rock and to ensure that the negotiations were " advanced.”
His complaints about the slowness in the works due to the drought have passed away.
Although Aragonès' words were not very categorical, the PSC accepts them as good.
“We have already been reiterating that we trust his word.
He made a mention, he made a commitment in Parliament and we consider it closed,” stated the socialist spokesperson, who has relied on the discretion of the negotiations to not give details about them.
The PSC has not yet detailed its demands for 2024 beyond emphasizing the fight against drought, education, housing, security and renewable energy.
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