As a synchronized clock, Catalan president Quim Torra and vice-president Pere Aragonès expressed their willingness to approve the Catalan general budget for 2020 and to, consequently, transfer them to the legislative chamber in the next weeks; In good logic, this should be before the end of October. This is good news for a country that has lived since 2017 with the same public accounts extended year after year. Now comes the most difficult part: moving from words to deeds, since it is much easier to criticise the government for what it does not do than making an effort to approve budgets.
Talk of improving the quality of life of citizens coming from all sides now, empty talk with frozen public accounts and failing to reflect current social needs and structural imbalances. In fact, budgets with today's multipartism end up being a more difficult problem than it seems, everywhere. The paralysis of Spanish politics has its origin in the budgetary defeat of Pedro Sánchez, who was vetoed by the votes of the pro-independence parties last February. This provoked elections in April and the situation has not changed, still without a clear solution to the investiture of Sánchez and without ruling out new elections in November.
But let's go back to Catalonia. President Torra has the right to try to move the Catalan budget forward and propose to pass them, he says, with the radical left CUP. In fact, in 2017 -last budgets approved- president Carles Puigdemont succeeded after obtaining the support of the deputies of the said political formation. It was a titanic task, obtained with the help of a motion of confidence and the threat of calling elections if the budgets did not obtain the necessary votes. However, even if this is not the only formula, it surely is the one that gives more coherence to the results of the last Parliamentary elections in Catalonia, namely 21st December 2017, from the logic of the pro-independence parliamentary majority in the Catalan Parliament obtained then.
Still, there are other political options that should not be ruled out either, given the offer from En Comú through Ada Colau and the PSC via Miquel Iceta. Some formulas are better than others; more comfortable or less uncomfortable; more logical and more illogical. But the big failure is always not to approve the budgets. This is what should be clear to any government.