President urges Spanish PM to set referendum conditions by 2027

Catalan president Pere Aragonès urged the next Spanish Prime Minister to set the conditions for a self-determination vote in Catalonia by 2027 during the opening speech of his third general policy debate in parliament.

Aragonès urged acting PM Pedro Sánchez, who is aiming to be named leader of the Spanish government for another term, to set the conditions of an agreed referendum in the next legislature in Spain, between 2023-2027. 

"The next Spanish PM needs to ensure that Spain and Catalonia will find a way to let Catalan citizens vote," he said on Tuesday morning. "The solution to the independence push is through common ground between both parties," he added.

Aragonès also took for granted that an amnesty law for those pushing for independence for Catalonia was inevitable. 

The "political conflict" between Catalonia and Spain "benefits neither party," Aragonès said. "Therefore, we have to try to resolve it politically."

"Pro-independence MPs hold the keys to the governability of Spain," the president highlighted. The condition is amnesty from the 2014 non-binding vote, through the 2017 independence push, until today, he outlined. "Voting is not a crime, letting the people vote is not a crime." 

The president also mentioned that he would soon be able to welcome former president Carles Puigdemont and ERC general secretary Marta Rovira to the Catalan government headquarters. The pair have been living in exile for years, after leaving Catalonia in the wake of the 2017 independence push. 

Yet, the president warned an amnesty law alone will not be enough: "Alone, it does not resolve the conflict." Instead, for the Catalan president, an amnesty would be a "starting point" to begin negotiations. 

"The future Spanish PM must commit to finding a way for the citizens of Catalonia to vote," Aragonès said.  

At the same time as his speech, the Spanish congress in Madrid saw the investiture debate of the conservative PP's candidate, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, which is all but destined to fail. 

Aragonès celebrated Feijóo's defeat, affirming that "Catalonia is and will be decisive," and that the territory defeated the right and far-right in July's general election. 

Economy

On finance and the economy, Aragonès celebrated that the 2023 budget was agreed upon with other parliamentary groups and that 88 of the 461 measures included in it were finalized, with the remaining 371 in process. Most of those measures came in research, education, social rights, and culture. 

His government are already working on a budget for 2024, and the head of government wants to go into the spending plan with the same "mentality" as what saw the 2023 budget passed, which saw agreements made with the opposition Socialists.

Aragonès also mentioned the fiscal deficit that Spain receives in taxes from Catalonia but does not invest there, recently calculated at around €22bn by the finance department.

He hailed the recovery made in the past few years as Catalonia came out of the economic crisis after the pandemic. The president said that his government's "shock plan" for jobs when he started has now brought high levels of employment and historic numbers of contributors to social security. 

"We're breaking records in investments, in exports, we have a highly international economy and we create quality jobs," Aragonès said.  

Yet, Catalonia is "lagging behind" in renewable energy, but this has been a key point that the administration has looked at in the past two years.

Social transformation

Aragonès said that renewable energy production has significantly increased in his term, from a capacity of 9MW in the 10 years before he became president to 1,500MW now; equivalent to the annual consumption of 750,000 homes.

On social transformation, one of the tenets of Aragonès' legislature, the president said that this term was the term of women's sport. For Aragonès, this means "making it visible, breaking barriers and stereotypes," and promoting the new reference points that society has celebrated in recent years.  

The president lamented the fact that there have been 12 femicides in Catalonia this year alone, with the most recent taking place last week in Tarragona, and 125 in total in the last ten years, something Aragonès called "unjustifiable."

"To speak about the school is to speak about the Catalan language" was another point of the president. The Catalan language immersion system in place in the education system here has been under threat for some years, and has been one of the defining challenges of Aragonès' mandate.

He vowed to strengthen the school system and asserted that the linguistic decree has helped reinforce schools' abilities to give classes in the languages they prefer. 

Aragonès criticized the Rodalies train system, calling it unreliable and a "disaster" for thousands of people every day. Another longstanding issue for Catalan politicians, Aragonès again called for the complete transfer of control of the Rodalies commuter rail system from Spain to Catalonia, making the comparison with the Ferrocarrils train system.