The anti-capitalists will present an amendment to the whole and ask for grassroots support
The CUP does not agree. The party has announced that it will amend the Generalitat’s 2024 budget in its entirety, after failing to reach an agreement with the Government. The anti-capitalists consider that the executive of Pere Aragonès has not attended to their more “reasonable” proposals and that he is following a project of “continuity of a failed country model”. Cupaire deputy Mar Ampurdanès has expressed her discomfort with ERC in a press conference after the last meeting with the Government, which took place this morning at the Palau de la Generalitat. “We do not find room for understanding with a Government that depends on the whims of the PSC” and that does not bet on real change, he said.
In the meeting this Friday morning, the Government had the presence of the general secretary of the Presidency, Núria Cuenca; the general director of interdepartmental coordination, Marc Ramentol, and the general secretary of Economy and Finance, Josep Maria Aguirre, while the anti-capitalists were represented by deputies Mar Ampurdanès and Xavi Pellicer. After the meeting, Ampurdanès criticized that ERC “continues to be the preferred partner of the most right-wing PSC in history, of the PSC of climate denialism”. The anti-capitalists have criticized the Government for rejecting the CUP’s efforts to “create a shared framework” with proposals such as 1,000 million euros to increase the public housing stock, the halt to evictions and power cuts, the reinforcement of primary care or a public distributor. “It was perfectly feasible, but it has not been possible,” he said.
The Hard Rock, the big budget obstacle
After the announcement of the CUP, the Aragonese Government can only appeal to Junts and the commons to approve the 2024 budgets, the “highest in the history of Catalonia”. The executive of ERC has never shown too much enthusiasm to obtain the support of the CUP, but he was open to incorporating some of his proposals even if they voted against them. The Government’s priority right now is to convince the commons that the Hard Rock project cannot be mixed with the budget negotiations and add them to the agreement reached with the PSC, as happened last year. At the moment, the commons seem willing to keep the pulse of republicans and socialists and try to force them to give up the casino as a show of strength in a complicated political context for Jéssica Albiach’s party.
The Minister of Economy and Finance, Natà lia Mas, has warned the commons that it will be “difficult to explain” that they block objectively good budgets for a project that does not even appear in the accounts and believes that it “would not be understood” that they present an amendment in totality After weeks of tug-of-war between ERC and the commons, the CUP has offered to create a common front against the casino project and with the announcement of the amendment in its entirety they make their strategy a little easier , since, when the time comes, Jéssica Albiach’s group could join the cupaire initiative without having to leave the negotiating table.
