“They are not seeking to advance in the autonomous state that we have given ourselves since 1978, but rather to destroy it and replace it with an asymmetrical confederal model where some negotiate bilaterally with the central power to obtain advantages and privileged treatments outside the common model.” This is how the regional presidents of the PP reject the reform of the financing of Catalonia that the PSOE and the ERC agreed to implement for the investiture of Salvador Illa at the head of the Generalitat in a manifesto in which no alternative proposal is proposed. in the face of a model that the party and the barons consider outdated and ineffective.
The manifesto, announced in the morning, came out after four in the afternoon and states that the pact between the PSC and the ERC “shows the waterline of our autonomous model of equality and solidarity, proposing to “exclude Catalonia from the common funds of the Autonomous Communities.”
The document refers to the “blackmail of a few” to achieve a system that will be “imposed” on the rest by “a national government willing to do anything to retain power.” “They do not hesitate to use Catalonia and the Catalans as bargaining chips,” the text emphasizes.
What the PP does not propose is its alternative to a financing model criticized both by the party and by its national and regional leaders. In fact, the manifesto takes care to renounce specific promises made by the government, such as the individual renegotiation of the debt that the regional executives maintain with the central executive and that the PP barons not only do not reject, but are willing to assume by themselves.
Some have already publicly demanded their own bilateral meetings with the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez. Others with the Vice President and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero. And there are those who, like the Andalusian Juan Manuel Moreno, demand transfers similar to those that are being negotiated with Catalonia, such as the Cercanías service, against the criteria expressed by their party.
The PP assumes that there are particularities in current regional financing. And it defends it. “We believe in the particularity of each Autonomous Community, but not in inequalities and lack of solidarity,” states the manifesto, which does not foresee any immediate proposals. Next Monday, the PP barons will attend Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s call for a meeting in Madrid to “address this moment of national emergency and begin to articulate a democratic response in all areas within our reach.”
