The president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, and the president of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, Oriol Junqueras, signed early Tuesday morning the agreement to approve the Catalan Budgets, which will be the first that the current government will have. The pact was staged through a photograph of the two leaders in the Saló Gòtic of the Generalitat, one of the most noble spaces of the Catalan Government headquarters. Their signature was possible after a long negotiation between both parties and also with the third investiture partner, Comuns, who still requests some extra improvements before giving their definitive yes.
The pact that Illa and Junqueras signed today includes three main demands from Esquerra Republicana. The first is a far-reaching agreement for the Government to build a new railway line that connects the cities around Barcelona without passing through the Catalan capital. The so-called Orbital line should be operational by 2040 if the pact is fulfilled. It was also agreed to allocate 500 million euros to the Catalan Tax Agency to accelerate its growth and lay the foundations so that, at some point, it can collect the IRPF, which has been one of the major battlegrounds of the Catalan legislature. Finally, ERC also secured a pact for the Catalan institutions (Generalitat and Barcelona City Council) to gain a majority in the Consortium of the Barcelona Free Zone.
Esquerra Republicana forced the withdrawal of Salvador Illa’s first budget project last winter, considering that the minimum conditions to agree on them were not met. At that time, the collection of the IRPF by the Catalan Tax Agency was a red line for ERC, something that has ceased to be so for the negotiation that now comes to its end. Nevertheless, ERC does not give up the transfer of this tax in the future. It has been precisely the flexibilization of ERC’s conditions that has caused headaches for Junqueras at the last moment. Just yesterday, the meeting of the party’s Consell Nacional that endorsed the budget pact was filled with critical interventions from leaders who do not see the leader’s strategy clearly.
For Illa, the approval of his first Budgets is a milestone of the legislature. After almost two years in power, he had not managed to draft new accounts, and the Generalitat operates, not without difficulties, with the budgets approved in 2023 by the previous Govern, led by Pere Aragonès. Now the Generalitat hopes that these budgets, which will come into effect in July, will allow it not only to get through this year but to complete the legislature in 2028.
