Geard Mateo, 31 July 2024
Image: Pedro Sánchez and Pere Aragonès GALA ESPÍN Barcelona
The Republicans achieve from the PSC/PSOE a pact very similar to the one sought by the ‘ex-president’: total collection and management of taxes in exchange for an item for the services provided by the State and in terms of territorial solidarity.
While waiting for the militancy to validate the agreement with the PSC in order to invest Salvador Illa, ERC has achieved what former president Artur Mas (CiU) sought, and failed to achieve, at the beginning of the procés: a great fiscal agreement with the State that was denied by the then president of the Government Mariano Rajoy (PP) in 2012 as ‘unconstitutional’.
Mas went to Madrid with the intention that the PP government would accept that Catalonia would collect and manage all taxes through its own tax agency, in exchange for a payment to the state for services provided in the autonomous community and also as a form of territorial solidarity. Rajoy said no.
100% of taxes
Now, 12 years later, ERC has wrested from PSC and PSOE a very similar agreement on fiscal matters, the so-called ‘singular financing’ or ‘the key to the till’, as the Republicans say, which includes, among other issues, that the Generalitat should manage, collect, settle and inspect 100% of taxes through the Catalan Tax Agency (which was created, by the way, as a result of the Pact of Tinell, with the aim of collecting its own taxes); from that meeting also came the commitment that the Generalitat would have a share, in percentages to be determined, of the total taxes)… in exchange for a payment to the State for services rendered and as a form of solidarity.
[This is the question that ERC will ask the militancy to tie Illa’s investiture.]For this to happen, the Organic Law of Financing of the Autonomous Communities (Lofca) must be modified, which requires a majority in Congress. A majority for which Junts is needed, which finds itself between a rock and a hard place, as the refusal of the heirs of Mas’ Convergència means saying no to the project that they themselves defended a few years ago and to one of the major demands of nationalism and the PSC regarding the improvement of autonomous financing.
Junts, on the attack with everything
In this scenario, ERC’s deputy secretary general, Marta Vilalta, encourages the neo-convergents to join this agreement, which is a ‘great leap in sovereignty’. But, for the moment, Junts has pulled out all the stops to try to dynamite the agreement: from Carles Puigdemont’s promise that he will return to Catalonia even at the risk of being arrested (a scenario that the Republicans made clear would not affect the pact with Illa) to the demonstrations and protests called by the ANC of Lluís Llach, who is close to the fugitive, who has even asked the ERC rank and file to vote against the pact, and the bombardment of the media close to the ex-president.
The last gesture of pressure has been launched by Junts in the form of a communiqué, in which it is stated that the agreements signed between ERC and PSC, including the economic agreement, can be reached without the need to invest Illa, whom the neo-convergents point out as the ‘most favourable to the repression of independence’.
The Comuns, with Illa
In this statement, Junts assures that the four folders agreed between Republicans and Socialists were already set in the ‘negotiation’ for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez as president of the Government, and their fulfilment depends on the ‘evolution of bilateral negotiations’ of Junts and ERC with the PSOE. On the other hand, if the pact goes ahead, the bilateral negotiation will take place between the PSOE and the PSC.
‘The fact that the (Catalan) Tax Agency can collect and settle all taxes, but the Government of Catalonia does not have the power over the money collected is not sovereignty and does not prevent the State’s failure to fulfil its obligations in terms of investment and, if necessary, in terms of ordinality’, he points out. Thus, one by one, he dismantles the points of the pre-agreement, while extending a hand to ERC to build a ‘common strategy’ and rebuild ‘trust’.
But the only certainty is that both the Republicans and the Comuns support Illa, if the grassroots approve, and that Junts is in no man’s land, with the risk of becoming an irrelevant force, as it will go into opposition in Parliament and it is not in its interest in Madrid to put more pressure on the government if it wants to maintain a certain degree of influence.
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