The president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, has closed this Thursday a budget agreement with Comuns that allows the Government to secure the parliamentary majority necessary to approve the budgets of Catalonia, the first accounts of the current legislature and a key piece for the Executive to leave behind the budget extension inherited from 2023.
The agreement has been officially confirmed by the Generalitat and by the leader of Comuns in the Parlament, Jéssica Albiach. With this pact, the PSC adds the six deputies of the formation and completes, together with the agreement already reached with ERC, the 68 seats that mark the absolute majority in the Catalan chamber.
The last-minute political novelty is precisely that understanding with Comuns, which finishes shoring up a budget negotiation that the Government had been trying to close for months.
The agreement with Comuns gives the Government the majority
The Generalitat has officially reported the pact with Comuns, which focuses especially on measures related to housing, one of the main negotiation axes demanded by Albiach's formation.
Among the announced commitments is the creation of a General Directorate for Housing Discipline to reinforce inspection and control over regulatory non-compliance in the residential market, as well as other measures to strengthen public policies in this area.
That agreement has an immediate parliamentary consequence: it allows Illa's Executive to guarantee the absolute majority necessary to move forward with the accounts. The PSC has 42 deputies; added to the 20 from ERC and the six from Comuns, the bloc reaches exactly 68 seats.
Until now, the Government had not secured sufficient support to approve the budgets, one of the major political tests of the legislature for Salvador Illa.
The precedent: the pact with ERC
The agreement with Comuns comes after the pact staged this very week between Illa and the leader of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, in a joint image at the Palau de la Generalitat that symbolized the unblocking of a complex negotiation.
That understanding with the Republicans represented a relevant shift after months of conversations and moments of deadlock between the two formations. For the Government, ERC's support was an essential piece, but not sufficient on its own to guarantee parliamentary approval.
Among the main measures included in that agreement is the promotion of the Orbital railway line, conceived to improve connections between municipalities in the metropolitan area of Barcelona without the need to pass through the Catalan capital.
The pact also includes the reinforcement of the Tax Agency of Catalonia through a multi-year investment of more than 500 million euros aimed at improving its technological and operational capacity, one of the most politically sensitive points of the negotiation with ERC.
In addition, the agreement incorporates changes in the governance of the Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona to reinforce the Catalan institutional weight in that body.
The Generalitat had been operating with rolled-over budgets since the accounts approved in 2023 during the Pere Aragonès era, a situation that limited the political and economic planning capacity of the Executive.
With the double agreement reached with ERC and Comuns, Illa manages to get key accounts on track to consolidate the parliamentary stability of the Government, although the final approval will still depend on the corresponding parliamentary process.