Antonio Baños: “It turns my stomach that the CUP should side with the PP"
Interviewed on "El Món a RAC 1", the former CUP MP disagreed with the group's decision to keep their amendment to the entirety of the Generalitat's 2016 budget
Barcelona"I'm sad. It turns my stomach that the CUP today should vote the same as García Albiol (1)". That is how forceful former CUP MP Antonio Baños was in expressing himself on Wednesday on the CUP's decision to keep their proposed amendment to the totality of the Generalitat's 2016 budget, a decision that the group made yesterday after a three-hour meeting.
Interviewed by Jordi Basté on the Catalan radio program "El món a RAC1" [The world on RAC1], Baños insisted that "it doesn't seem right to me" to say to people "that 870 million euros will not be available. This was a political and a symbolic budget and I believe that yesterday they failed to take this into consideration”.
"Half of the CUP was in favor of passing the budget”
The former Catalan MP reminded that "half of the CUP was in favor of passing" the budgets, because they understood that "beyond small contingencies", this step was important to "show that the Parliament and the Government work, and that they have what it takes to pass the legislation needed for disconnecting” from Spain.
"I'm beginning to think that only the Holy Spirit knows how the CUP works", snapped Baños, who nevertheless believes that the process "can forge ahead": "so many catastrophes and mutations have happened that it can continue to push forward". In addition, the interviewee still considers the tensions between the CUP, ERC and CDC to be "normal": "they are parties that competed, and now they have to work together".
Baños admitted that "the CUP still believes that CDC is pulling their leg on the topic of independence", and reminded that "CiU was never in favor of independence before".
“Who's got the upper hand in the CUP?”
Asked "who's [really] got the upper hand" in the CUP, Baños stressed that "you can't say for sure, because it depends": "This is the CUP's second term in office. It's a new party, municipally based, and the interplay of forces is very complex”.
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(1) N.T. Xavier Garcia Albiol is the PP leader in Catalonia.
