The pact that the PSOE has signed with ERC for Catalonia is for a “singular financing” that not only does not attack an equality between territories that is “guaranteed”, but also any autonomous community can aspire to the same as long as it follows the steps of the Catalan Generalitat: increasing its powers to deepen its self-government. This is the thesis that this Saturday has defended from Seville the first vice president of the Government, Minister of Finance and deputy general secretary of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero, who has framed the path initiated in the “line of federalization” that the PSOE proposes, and which is summarized in a “new look” at autonomous financing that involves “accompanying resources with powers”.
Montero has spoken at the meeting of the Andalusian socialist interparliamentary at the start of the political year, at a time of tension in the PSOE as demonstrated by the fact that in Aragon it has rejected this fiscal agreement with ERC. A document that, in her opinion, “nobody has read” and that opens the door to singular financing such as that claimed for example by the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands “and nobody is tearing their clothes off”. For this reason, she has defended that the path that is now opening up is what “makes compatible what is common with what is particular” to each territory, something that “has always existed”.
Not only that, but the pact “speaks of Catalonia’s vocation for self-government”, something that is included in its statute of autonomy as in that of other communities, that of Andalusia, for example. “Moreno Bonilla demonises issues that are in the Andalusian Statute”, another thing is that the PP “does not believe in self-government” and is not prepared to assume more powers.
“Greater doses of self-government”
“Defending equality in all territories is compatible with the aspiration for more autonomy, or do we have statutes of autonomy that are just for show?” he asked rhetorically. For this reason, he “encouraged” his fellow militants in Andalusia to “read the agreement with ERC and the economic parts of the Andalusian Statute”, since this way they will see that “they are identical”. “What we are going to do is to delve into greater doses of self-government”, he reiterated.
The message is not a coincidence in a territory like Andalusia, where the PSOE has to do some juggling to explain the Catalan agreement and where it has become the PP’s main argument to disarm the opposition led by Juan Espadas. For this reason, Montero has put special emphasis on repeating that “the PSOE is a guarantee of equality, it is in its DNA”, and has attacked a PP that “says every day that Spain is breaking up and every day what exists is stronger and more cohesive”.
This is helped, he stressed, by the fact that there is now “a socialist president in Catalonia”, a Salvador Illa who “watches over the integrity and well-being of our country and who shares its territorial structure”, which is compatible with “legitimate vocations for self-government”. “Illa respects the constitutional order and is trying to normalise the situation of coexistence, because in Catalonia there was no talk of what matters to the working and middle classes”.
Reform of regional financing
That is why he insists on the need to read the agreement between PSOE and ERC carefully, because without doing so “I hear self-serving interpretations from the usual suspects who want to confront”. In this sense, he has accused the PP of “lying” about it in order to “make noise and pit the rest of Spain against Catalonia because they think that this will suit them”. “They only use Catalonia to confront”, he added.
This does not mean, he acknowledged, that a reform of the regional financing system must be undertaken, which the PP has refused to do until now because “it will never have a common position”, since the interests of Galicia or Madrid clash, for example, with those of Andalusia. But the fact that there are officially four territories underfunded with the current model (Andalusia, the Valencian Community, Murcia and Castilla-La Mancha) does not mean that they are not receiving additional funds. Since Pedro Sánchez arrived at La Moncloa, Montero points out, Andalusia itself has received more than 7.5 billion euros extra per year when Moreno’s Government demands 4,000, “what are they going to do, give up the other 3,500?”
In passing, he criticised the “hypocrisy” of Moreno’s PP, which with one hand asks for more funds while with the other collects less by “lowering taxes for the richest”. “There is no solidarity and equality without fiscal progressivity”, which is why he considers that the attitude of the PP in general is not only unsupportive but also “an attack on equality”. And he gave another example: the Popular Party demands further reductions in VAT, but then the autonomous communities governed by Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party “ask to be sent what is not collected” if this step is taken.
Democratic regeneration and the ERE case
In her speech, the First Vice-President encouraged her colleagues “not to buy into the PP’s mental framework”, which paints a catastrophic picture that “we will not back down from”. “We know where the threats and risks are: the PP’s vocation is to privatise public services”, which she contrasted with a PSOE that “defends the interests of the majority. We are not against anyone, we are in favour of the majority”.
He added that one of the great challenges of the political year that is now beginning is democratic regeneration, in order to “give citizens criteria to avoid manipulation”. In this sense, he announced (without further details, of course) that the Government “is going to deploy an intense agenda of democratic regeneration”, a process that must count on the participation of the whole of society to allow citizens to participate in public life “without anyone coercing them”.
This, by the way, has been linked to a new staunch defence of the Constitutional Court ruling that has turned the ERE case in Andalusia upside down. “Finally justice has been done for our colleagues and we have learned the truth about a false case to overthrow governments”, which led to socialist leaders being “vilified and imprisoned” in an operation in which “the limits of political ethics were exceeded”. The person responsible for this would be a PP that achieved by this means “what it could not achieve at the polls”.
Source: www.eldiario.es
