The president defends that the accounts are the best for citizens and that they have nothing to do with the leisure and tourism project
The president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, has made an appearance from the Gothic Gallery to present the budget project for 2024, which will be approved by the Government in an extraordinary meeting today. Aragonès has called on the commons to support the accounts, which already have the approval of the PSC, and has assured that they do not include “not a single euro” or any measures related to the Hard Rock, the leisure and tourism project which the commons reject and which they have set as a condition for negotiating the budgets. “There is no reason not to approve them. We cannot put the project at risk because of the differences on this issue,” said Aragonès, who recalled that the Hard Rock does not depend on the Government, but on “private promoters”.
The budgets are not yet guaranteed their approval, or even their processing. The commons, who have supported – with favorable votes or abstentions – all the budgets approved by Parliament since 2017, do not want their votes to be taken for granted. For this reason, this time, more than ever, they have drawn an immovable red line: that Aragonès renounce the urban master plan (PDU) that would allow the Hard Rock. Without this, they say, there will be no budgets. Its flag is the climate, against models linked to leisure and tourism in an emergency context due to the drought.
The highest social budgets in history
The president has defended that the budgets are an opportunity to realize demands widely shared by society. “All resources are allocated to improve people’s lives”, said the president, who emphasized the need to “move forward”. “Each year we have put a lot of effort into making the budgets a reality. They are the best tool to make the most of the resources we have,” said the ERC leader, who claimed to have “overcome” the cuts. “More resources than ever have been mobilized to build schools, build hospitals and build infrastructure”, explained Aragonès, who described the budgets as the “best possible” despite the fiscal deficit.
The budgets, of 43,700 million, are the highest in history. They are 2,400 million more than the previous year, with a social but also “entrepreneurial” priority. He has set as priorities hiring health professionals, reducing waiting lists, having more teachers – especially in the field of inclusive schools – and promoting educational improvements through the committee of experts. The project must also be used for reindustrialization and research. Quim Nadal, Minister of Research and Universities, was present in the Gothic Gallery, sitting next to Natàlia Mas, the Minister of Economy who drew up the budgets and had them ready for weeks.
52% is already history
The negotiation between ERC and Junts to form a Government after the last elections, complicated and at the limit of the term, already served as a warning that the 52% obtained at the polls by the pro-independence bloc would not have a very effective translation. The first budgets were already approved by the commons – the CUP, despite investing Aragonès, withdrew from it – and the voluntary departure of Junts from the executive opened a new scenario of alliances resulting from the abandonment of the dynamics that had perpetuated the process. Now, for the second consecutive year, it is the PSC that profiles itself as a partner of the Government in accounts that, unlike years like 2017, no longer contain any political annex on national objectives or major projects such as a referendum. The change of stage, between Barcelona and Madrid, has been consolidated while waiting for the amnesty to be achieved.
