Alberto Nuñez Feijoo He has put his cards on the table. Less than two weeks before the meeting he will hold in Madrid with the regional presidents of his party, he managed this Monday to produce a manifesto in which the explicit commitment to act together in the fight against the Catalan quota.
In the document, signed by the PP barons with governmental responsibilities, one idea stands out above the others: the umpteenth transfer to Catalonia goes beyond an economic privilege. It is an “illegitimate attempt” to promote a “change of the Constitution through the back door.” And this is where the main opposition party wants to focus all its attention.
Although the reform of the regional financing system is a priority for the PP, what is crucial now, say those around Feijóo, is to prevent what was agreed between the PSC and the ERC for the investiture of Illa from coming to fruition.. “We must first stop the constitutional coup”they claim.
“It is a change of political model in which the equality of the Spanish people is at stake, wherever they live,” says one of the main leaders of the party in a conversation with this newspaper. “The advance towards the independence of Catalonia” with the breakup of the common regime, he warns, will have disastrous consequences for the whole country.
For Feijóo, the first point of the September summit of barons is to define an entire offensive, at the judicial and political level, that manages to swallow up the economic agreement for Catalonia. From there, the next chapter will consist of agreeing on a common position to reform the economic financing system.
On this subject, as published by EL ESPAÑOL this Monday, the popular leader has already designed a proposal to bring all the regional presidents into agreement. In Genoa, it is admitted that the initial positions are not coherent, which does not mean that it is not possible to reach an agreement. “The main thing is that everyone understands that they have to lose a little and that no one wins more than the others.”adds a person close to Feijóo.
What is unanimous in the popular ranks is to defend that any change in the financing model must be made in a multilateral forum and not in bilateral meetings with the government, as María Jesús Montero intends to counter the criticisms for the unique treatment of Catalonia.
“Decisions, and even more so those of this magnitude, must be taken together in the corresponding institutional framework, and not in closed-door negotiations between parties that do not represent the whole of Spain or the whole of Catalonia,” the barons concluded in the manifesto “for a solidarity and egalitarian financing model negotiated by all.”
“Health, education, social services and all public services provided by the CCAA and all the city halls of our country cannot be put at risk, nor can they be used as a bargaining chip for the permanent commercialisation of power in exchange for privileges that will only benefit the politicians behind this unconstitutional exchange,” they added.
Spain at the “crossroads”
However, the central idea of this document was summarized in the first line: “Spain and its territorial model are at a crossroads.” To the pacts for the investiture of Sánchez is now added that of Illa who, warn the popular, “shows the waterline of our autonomous model of equality and solidarity by proposing to exclude Catalonia from the common fund of the LACC”.
Sánchez and his partners, they insist, “are not seeking to advance the autonomous state” enshrined in the 1978 Constitution, quite the contrary. Their intention is to “destroy it and replace it with an asymmetrical confederal model, in which some negotiate bilaterally with the central power to obtain advantages and privileged treatment outside the common model.”
At all times, the PP presidents maintain that “the accumulation of arbitrariness aimed at weakening the State has no place” in the Spanish “democratic system.” In addition, they abound in criticism that they pursue the sole objective of “Pedro Sánchez’s personal benefit to remain in Moncloa.” Faced with this, the barons question the silence of the PSOE: “It has remained silent in the face of the disappearance of its own principles.”
For all these reasons, the barons announce that the objective of the meeting they will hold on September 6 with Feijóo will be: “Respond to this moment of national emergency and begin to articulate a democratic response in all areas within our reach, agreed by the LACC and with the greatest firmness, in the face of this illegitimate attempt to modify our Constitution and our State model through the back door, under the dictation of those who have never accepted the equality and solidarity of the Spaniards.”
