Pere Aragonès calls elections in Catalonia on May 12 | Elections in Catalonia 12-M

Catalonia will hold early elections on May 12, nine months before the legislature expired. The president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, announced this Wednesday the dissolution of the Parliament after seeing the approval of the 2024 budget project truncated and the content of which he had agreed with the PSC. “I assume responsibility for this blockade,” said the national coordinator of Esquerra in a statement at the Palau de la Generalitat. The yes to the processing of the accounts had the support of his group and the PSC, in addition to that of a deputy from the Mixed Group, but, even so, he was missing one vote. He president has defended that in the face of crossed vetoes and red lines – in reference to the no of the commons before the Hard Rock megacasino project—had no other option but to go to the elections.

“The red lines and the blockades of each other have led to the Budgets of the Generalitat with the most resources in history being rejected,” lamented the president. Faced with this scenario of blockade, the already acting head of the Government has justified holding new elections and thus “moving the country forward without immobility.” The issue of the megacasino has been key in the agonizing negotiation of the accounts: the PSC demanded that Aragonès guarantee its urban planning process while the commons made his vote subject to stopping the initiative of the North American developer.

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He president, who will officially sign the convocation decree next Monday, has chosen to use the nuclear button of electoral advance after the amendments to the entirety received 68 votes in favor and 67 against. The Government and its budgetary partner, the PSC, only managed to get unexpected support from the mixed group deputy Cristina Casol, who was expelled from Junts in January. Junts, Ciudadanos and CUP asked in their interventions that Aragonès terminate his one-color Government and bring forward the elections.

ERC’s optimism regarding the approval of the accounts was waning as the hours went by and finally the head of the Government has chosen to rectify what had been his mantra since he arrived at the Palau de la Generalitat in 2021: he would exhaust the entire legislature in in order to convey the idea of ​​stability and serious leadership. In Catalonia, since the last mandate of the socialist José Montilla, in 2010, the four years of his mandate have not been completed. The lack of accounts left Aragonès with no room for maneuver in the middle of an election year, exposed to the wear and tear of having to vote on credit modifications in the Chamber to address emergencies such as the drought.

After the collapse of the bill, Aragonès took the floor to address the plenary session and announce that he was calling an extraordinary meeting of the Government in the Palau. Officially it was the necessary procedure to be able to withdraw the bill accompanying the Budgets but it has been the way to be able to stage with all the solemnity and from the headquarters of the Executive his decision to call the polls.

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From the beginning of this debate, and unlike previous years, the commons closed any possibility of withdrawing their veto of the accounts. In ERC and in the PSC they criticized that they put that condition now when in the past it did not imply a stumbling block and they have shown that the criticism for what they consider an electoral operation will have a lot of echo in the budding campaign. Faced with the blockade, the leader of Junts, Albert Batet, also reached out to the Republicans, although he had also advocated going to elections.

14-M will arrive a month before the European elections, in which the projections for ERC were not very promising, and right in the middle of the debate on the General State Budgets. Aragonès had already let it slip last weekend that if the Generalitat’s accounts are not afloat, those of the central government could experience turbulence.

So far, polls point to the socialists as eventual winners of some Catalan elections, with ERC very close behind. Aragonès’ decision catches Junts on the wrong foot, which has not yet resolved the issue of the candidate and the open internal debate on whether or not it should be former president Carles Puigdemont. On the other hand, he catches in the middle of the internal debate the new pro-independence forces that want to emerge – such as the one promoted by the ANC or the MEP Clara Ponsatí – and the PSC facing the wear and tear that the consequences of the Koldo case. The commoners will also have to take responsibility for their decision and deal with the possible repercussions that their relationship with Sumar may have.

Aragonès, in fact, has wanted to mark Salvador Illa as his direct rival from the beginning. The 12-M will be, he said, the struggle between a PSC that draws as a conformist vision rooted in the past, “that feels comfortable with dependence on the State”, and the project that he leads, “fully republican” and “with the unequivocal horizon of freely deciding the future as a people.”