The general secretary of ERC, Elisenda Alamany, has stated that the intervention of the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, this Monday on the occasion of the second anniversary of his mandate is "very disconnected from reality."
"If you take your daughters to public school, if you use public healthcare, if you take the train every day, you will agree with me that Mr. Illa's self-satisfied speech was disconnected from the country we live in today," she stated this Tuesday at a press conference in the Parlament, where she appeared alongside the spokesperson for ERC in the Chamber, Ester Capella.
When questioned about why both she and the party president, Oriol Junqueras, did not attend Illa's conference, she explained that at that moment they were working.
Capella, for her part, also criticized the president's speech, which she described as "excessively self-satisfied" and lacking in "principle of reality," considering that there is evident discontent in Catalan society over issues such as the state of the education system, the error in the PISA tests, and the state of the Rodalies network.
According to the republican spokesperson, the balance of Illa's first two years in office is far from the expectations of the citizens, and the future announcements he made "lack credibility." In this sense, she emphasized that the key question the Govern must answer is how it plans to obtain more resources to fulfill the commitments outlined by the president.
Education and country priorities
Even so, Capella positively assessed that the president "takes as priorities a large part of what Esquerra Republicana has put on the country's agenda," citing the strengthening of educational investment, the climate control of schools, and the resolution of the conflict with the teaching staff.
Regarding the educational agreement that Illa referred to in his intervention, she defended that it is an "understanding of the country that goes from the bottom up" and that involves all actors in the educational field.
Capella also recalled that the head of the Catalan Executive must appear in the Parlament on September 23 to provide explanations about the error in the sample of the PISA tests, and warned that if the clarifications "are not satisfactory," ERC will demand political responsibilities again.
Barcelona Airport and governance
Regarding the possible expansion of the Barcelona Airport, Alamany has reiterated that ERC maintains its rejection of the project, although he has emphasized that his main concern is focused on the "governance" of the infrastructures.
"It is necessary for Catalunya to have decision-making capacity and, therefore, to be part of the governance of the Catalan airport system," he has argued, insisting that this is a key issue for his party.