The Catalan government of the Republican Left (ERC) and president Pere Aragonès must be very sure that they will have their budget approved sooner or later when, with all the important issues with the Catalan Socialists (PSC) apparently still open, the ERC spokesperson, Marta Vilalta, has accused the Socialists of blackmailing them with their star and non-negotiable proposals and has demanded that they take not longer than this week to grant them the votes of their 33 deputies. Thus, you could be led to believe that the Republicans are holding some important card in what it intends to be the final days of the negotiation, since, if not, putting pressure on the ally who has to make it easier for you to push ahead with what is usually the star project of a legislature is a trifle risky.
Although I do recognize that the parties have been keeping their cards hidden so as not to give their game away, it has been for too many weeks now that every Monday seems to be the week that the final agreement on the Catalan public accounts will be reached and then we get to Friday in the same deadlock we were in five days earlier. This is how we spent December and this is how the third week of January has begun. And, in the end, the disagreements remain significant and well-known: the expansion of El Prat airport, the Hard Rock complex in the Tarragona region and the expansion of the Fourth Beltway or Ronda in the Vallès county. In addition to some instruments of parliamentary control on issues that at the moment only depend on the Catalan government, such as advertising spending in the media and the CEO public polling agency, which is becoming the Catalan equivalent of Spain's CIS and is responsible for official surveys.
ERC is desperately trying to keep the airport, Hard Rock and the Fourth Beltway out of the negotiation, because they are not, if you will, strictly part of a budget negotiation. Precisely the opposite of what the PSC is seeking, which is nothing more than demonstrating without any nuance that it has a different political project than ERC and one in which large infrastructures are of capital importance. The departure of Together for Catalonia (Junts) from the government has enabled the PSC to cruise onto this political motorway of a country model and it is quite remarkable that the Socialists raise their flag for issues that the party of Puigdemont, Borràs and Turull also defends or, at least, has defended, creating the paradox that for the three projects there is a clear parliamentary majority on the right, hence the uncomfortable logic, versus ERC, the Commons and the CUP.
While ERC was raising the tone, Salvador Illa reiterated from the Basque Country, in a meeting with business people, that he is willing to negotiate the budget with the Republicans, but that what would not happen is an outright accession to their version of the accounts. For the PSC, this willingness to negotiate, already expressed in August, is not reciprocated by the Catalan government. If things continue like this, ERC has only two possible moves: to present the budget project without an agreement, which is not very advisable and may backfire, or to extend last year's budget. A scenario that is never advisable, but much less so when you only have 33 MPs in a chamber of 135. It is this fragility in the government that leads one to think that, sooner or later, ERC will end up accepting a large part of the PSC approach. If only because the alternative scenario is worse and enormously risky.