Although the political discourse that most transcends Emiliano García-Page, even before the last general elections, is that linked to his rejection of the demands of the Catalan independence parties, this will not be the central core of his meeting this Friday with Pedro Sánchez . at Moncloa.
Beyond the agenda marked by issues like amnesty, against which Castilla-La Mancha appealed with the PP communities before the Constitutional Court, or the agreement between the PSC and the ERC on the financing of Catalonia, the Castilian-Manchego president also wants to take advantage of the Sánchez meeting to take note of several “pending” issues related to water, infrastructure and renewable energy, among others.
This is the first official meeting in six years between the president of Castilla-La Mancha and the government. The two have coincided in other types of institutional events, in the Conference of Presidents or in electoral campaign meetings, but not in a bilateral meeting of this magnitude.
Very recently, Page declared that he was not giving up on “persuading” Sánchez on the Catalan question, but this week he made it clear that he would tell the Prime Minister “the same thing” that people hear in the Street. “I have, if you like, a bad habit or an unusual habit of saying the same thing in private as in public.”
That same Thursday, a few hours before the meeting, the president of Castile-La Mancha insisted: “Apart from the noise with the government [de España]I disagree with very fundamental things which have to do with territorial policy, with the concept of Spain and with the populisms which are the subject of blackmail… Beyond this disagreement which is public and notorious , and which I have no problem repeating in private, In fact, I already do it very often, I conclude many agreements with the Spanish government.
Not just Catalan funding
The truth is that the President of Castile-La Mancha speaks in his speeches and in his relations with citizens about both national and regional politics. Now and before, long before. From Catalonia and Castile-La Mancha. The first goes much further, but regional government sources clarified elDiarioclm.es that he does not want Friday’s meeting to focus solely on Catalan financing, even if it is true that all the others revolve around this issue.
“I want to listen,” García-Page also said of meeting Sánchez. In other words, its objective is to learn from the President of the Government on certain “pending” issues in the autonomous community, mainly in terms of infrastructure and water.
On the first problem, the AVE to Lisbon is the main problem. Currently, the Government of Castile-La Mancha is waiting for the Ministry of Transport to decide on the final route passing through Toledo and Talavera de la Reina. It is one of those almost “historical” themes which have not yet come to fruition, even if the horizon for its inauguration is set in 2030, the date of the World Cup which Spain will host with Portugal and Morocco.
When it comes to water, Page happens to meet Sánchez on the same day as Carlos Mazón and Fernando López Miras, respectively presidents of the Valencian Community and Murcia, regions with which they have been in constant disagreement for decades. Castilla-La Mancha due to the Tajo-Segura transfer.
The Page government is clear in this regard. “We must comply with the ruling of the Supreme Court which calls for respect for the ecological flows” of the Tagus and the Ministry of Ecological Transition must announce “now” the new operating regulations promised for the aforementioned aqueduct. They are six months behind the deadlines for the new hydrological planning.
Page stressed this week that there are currently “good levels” at the head of the Tagus – where the transfer begins – due to the recent rains, but also “because of the decisions that have been taken”. For all these reasons, he will ask Pedro Sánchez to clearly commit to the desalination policy. “There are days and moments when only 12% of Spain’s desalination capacity is used”, which, according to him, “is not sustainable”.
There is another issue that the president of Castilla-La Mancha has repeatedly insisted on and that he will have in his “file” for his bilateral summit in Moncloa, according to regional government sources. This is their request, also addressed to the electricity companies, so that this autonomous community can have part of the renewable energy installed in certain areas.
A “quota” of installed renewable energy
Castilla-La Mancha is one of the regions with the most wind and photovoltaic energy installed but, paradoxically, there are areas where this situation contrasts with the low or absence of availability of this energy. This is why the regional government is considered the “energy pantry” of the country. But he did not define by what mechanisms the request for this energy “quota” for the region could be achieved. This is why it is one of the topics planned for the meeting with Pedro Sánchez.
This meeting inevitably overshadows the almost continuous disagreement that Emiliano García-Page has had with the president of the government since the split in the PSOE eight years ago. The use of the amnesty law and its frontal rejection of Catalan financing are only the latest chapter in years of messages from the Castilian-La Mancha president against the central government, explicit and implicit.
Currently, he is the only socialist “baron” with an absolute majority in Spain, but also the most critical. Sánchez rarely responded to their accusations and criticisms, but other members of the government and the party came to place him “on the margins” of the PSOE.
Although Page has lowered his voice over the past two weeks, the meeting is also marked by the upcoming federal congress of the PSOE, from November 29 to December 1. Pedro Sánchez will revalidate his mandate as socialist leader there. And everything suggests that Page will also do so at the head of the PSOE Castilla-La Mancha during the regional conclave scheduled for January 18 and 19.
For the PP, Page is a “puppet”
On the other hand, in the days preceding the meeting, the PP took the opportunity to put more pressure on the regional president with the same mantra that he keeps repeating: that the socialist deputies of Castilla-La Mancha in Congress must vote against Catalan financing if this agreement is voted on.
It doesn’t matter that Page said he would speak on other topics or that he has been at odds with Moncloa for years. They think it’s just a posture. For the party led by Paco Núñez in the autonomous community, the president of Castilla-La Mancha is “the puppet” of Pedro Sánchez, because “when things go badly” he “does absolutely nothing”.
At the national level, the atmosphere was also heated by the spokesperson of the PP in Congress, Miguel Tellado, who predicted a “living room scene” in which García-Page “will lower his head during the meeting and shout a little later.” In addition, he declared that the regional leader is “one of the most dangerous characters of ‘sanchism’ and the PSOE.”
At the PSOE Castilian-La Mancha it has been reiterated in recent days that the PP is creating “hoaxes and lies” about the meeting to “hide its uselessness.” This refers to the fact that the people voted in Congress against the spending ceiling of the general state budgets. The socialists estimate that this represents a loss of 230 million euros for Castilla-La Mancha.
