On the eve of a new meeting this Monday between Comuns and the Government to negotiate the Catalan Budgets, the leader of the formation in the Parliament, Jéssica Albiach, has refused to set timelines to reach an agreement and has placed the pressure on Salvador Illa’s Executive. “We will go faster or slower depending on the agility with which the Government responds to our demands,” she warned this Sunday. The green light from the Comuns will be the last step to articulate the accounts if the ERC National Council validates this Monday the agreement reached between Junqueras’ party and Illa’s Government.
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Albiach has assured that the Catalan Executive “is in a bit of a hurry” to approve the accounts before the close of the parliamentary session period, but she has made it clear that the Comuns will not accept accelerating the negotiations. “We will not apply pauses, but we will also not allow going at full speed without being able to properly evaluate all the responses the Government gives us,” she said during a visit to the Sant Isidre fair in Viladecans. The leader insisted that the pace of the conversations will depend exclusively on the Government’s willingness to assume the proposals put forward by her formation.
The main demand of the Comuns is housing. Albiach has called for “a real leap” in public policies and has proposed mobilizing 2.5 billion euros throughout the legislature, as EL PAÍS reported, between direct resources from the Generalitat and financing from the Catalan Institute of Finance. The proposal also includes doubling annually the call of the Pla de Barris until intervening each year in 40 neighborhoods with an investment of 400 million euros. “We believe that the cohesion of our neighborhoods, their conditions, and their dignity are non-negotiable,” Albiach defended.
The Comuns also want to promote a law in the Parliament to speed up the conversion of offices and commercial premises into protected housing and facilitate construction on already existing facilities. The formation also demands permanently safeguarding official protection to prevent these developments from ending up incorporated into the free market.
The second major block of the negotiation is mobility. Albiach has described the Rodalies situation as “a minefield” and has called for changes in the railway connection project with the airport. “The R-Aeroport cannot be exclusively a train for tourists,” said the leader, who demands that the connection can also be used by residents and reach Vallès Occidental and Oriental.
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On fiscal matters, Comuns also want to incorporate measures linked to the fight against inequality. Albiach has warned that “child poverty is skyrocketing” and has denounced the growing concentration of wealth. Therefore, the formation proposes promoting from the Parliament a law inspired by the so-called Zucman tax, formulated by French economist Gabriel Zucman, so that large fortunes of more than 100 million euros pay at least 2%. According to the leader, the measure would allow collecting about 5.2 billion euros across the State.
Regarding the conflict of teachers with the Government, Albiach has urged the Executive to come with “a strong proposal” to the new round of negotiations, in statements collected by Europa Press. “They are not asking for privileges, they are asking for resources to be able to do their job,” said the leader, who attributed part of the current situation of Catalan education to “decades of underfunding” and the cuts applied during the governments of Convergència i Unió.
Despite the conflict, Albiach has avoided explicitly linking the budgetary support of the Comuns to the outcome of the educational talks and has shown herself convinced that the Government will end up reaching an agreement with the educational community: “The hardest part we have already achieved, which is that the Government and the unions sit down again.”
