The CPS had to settle for celebrating the Festa de la Rosa, its annual meeting, without Pedro Sánchez. The prime minister canceled due to rain, but that didn’t stop the socialists, led by President Salvador Illa, from giving themselves a boost in self-esteem after an electoral cycle in which they accumulated an unprecedented concentration of power.
Without Sánchez, all the attention went to the president of the Generalitat, who, in front of 10,000 socialist activists, gathered as always in La Pineda de Gavà, proclaimed that he would work so that Catalonia would be the economic leader of Spain with a left-wing policy and without lowering taxes. “Catalonia has returned to improve Spain,” he proclaimed in his speech.
In line with his interventions since he became president, Illa defended that his priority in government is to bring calm after the independence process and at the same time to be decisive. He baptized it as a “triple revolution” of “good government”, “normality” and “respect”.
Although he focused his speech on a Catalan tone, Illa did not avoid some of the challenges of the Generalitat that condition the Spanish political debate, none more delicate – even among the socialists – than the singular financing agreed with ERC. “Catalonia has been and will be at the forefront of solidarity in Spain,” he assured, limiting himself to attacking the PP governments that criticize him: “Those who demand more resources by lowering taxes will not give us lessons. “That is not solidarity, it is something else.”
It was then that the first secretary of the CPS announced that “Catalonia is returning to roll up its sleeves and get involved in improving Spain”. An idea that he had already expressed during his trip to Madrid this week, during which he took advantage of the celebration of the Diada to meet with Felipe VI and the business community.
Illa took advantage of the activist audience to announce his commitment to social democratic and left-wing policies and to reducing inequality. And after promising to strengthen public services such as health and education, he mentioned housing as a key element. “It is perhaps the public policy that must be deployed with the most energy,” he acknowledged, before warning that if it is not implemented, equality is at risk.
To address these challenges, Illa also called for broad political agreements, especially at a time of the rise of the extreme right. “Broad coalitions of those who, with nuances and sometimes differences, share left-wing values have never been more necessary than today,” he said. Concretely, to block the path, according to the accused, to hate speech to which the right “does not know how to draw a red line.”
