The president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, and the leader of Esquerra Republicana, Oriol Junqueras, have staged this Tuesday the agreement to move forward with the Catalan budgets, a key pact for the Government as it is the first budget of the current legislature.
The signing of the agreement, visualized with a joint image at the Palau de la Generalitat, comes after months of negotiation between socialists and republicans and allows the Catalan Executive to move forward with the approval of budgets with which it seeks to leave behind the extension of the accounts approved in 2023, during the stage of Pere Aragonès.
The understanding between PSC and ERC also represents an important political lifeline for Illa, who had not managed to approve new budgets since his arrival at the Government.
What the agreement between PSC and ERC includes
One of the main pillars of the pact is the promotion of the so-called Orbital railway line, an infrastructure designed to connect cities in the Barcelona area without the need to pass through the Catalan capital.
The agreement also includes the reinforcement of the Catalan Tax Agency with a multi-year investment of over 500 million euros to strengthen its operational and technological capacity.
This point has special political relevance, as the expansion of the capacities of the Catalan treasury has been one of the main issues in the negotiation between ERC and the Government.
In addition, the pact includes changes in the governance of the Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona to reinforce the Catalan institutional weight in that body.
Months of negotiation and a turn by ERC
The budget negotiation had gone through various moments of deadlock. ERC had even forced the withdrawal of the Government's first budget project, considering the conditions then proposed insufficient, in a negotiation marked by demands linked to previous political commitments between socialists and republicans.
The agreement now reached reflects a change in that negotiation and allows Illa's Executive to recover a key piece for parliamentary stability. The Generalitat had been operating with extended budgets since 2023, a situation that limited the Government's planning capacity.
With this pact, Salvador Illa seeks to equip himself with new accounts to face the rest of the legislature with greater political and budgetary stability. The definitive approval of the budgets will now depend on completing the corresponding parliamentary process.