The weakness of the Catalan government, with ERC in a minority, has led to a new early election in the autonomous community, set yesterday for May 12 by the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, after the Parliament rejected the draft budget of the Generalitat for 2024.
The new date with the polls will be marked by the aftermath of the procés, as Junts will try to ensure that its candidate can be Carles Puigdemont, despite the fact that his return to Spain is conditioned by the application of the amnesty law. According to the party’s secretary general, Jordi Turull: “He could be here for the investiture debate”.
Faced with the news of the call for elections in Catalonia, the head of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, has decided not to draw up the draft budget for 2024. Sánchez understands that it does not make sense to sit down to negotiate the accounts in the run-up to an election campaign in which the PSC will compete with ERC and Junts for the presidency of the Government. In this way, the government considers the budgets approved last year to have been extended -definitively- and will begin to work on outlining those for 2025, on which the Eurogroup has already requested adjustments with the aim of guaranteeing compliance with European rules.
