A key thinker of the 20th century died a few days ago. Jürgen Habermas, a German, was born in 1929, during the Great Depression. He lived through the defeat of 1945, the Constitution drafted by the Allies for the new Federal Republic in 1949, the crisis of East Germany in 1989 and reunification, and lamented the missed opportunity of not creating a new constitution for Germany in 1990. Habermas defended a political reality based on three principles: promoting participation and transparency of information. He believed that individuals should be able to distance themselves from events and exercise their own judgment, to think for themselves, but his opinion has been largely forgotten. He observed with concern the drift toward technocracy and the erosion of solidarity. He was a political conciliator and a representative of the Frankfurt School and of the more European, restrained, and analytical German thought. An anchor for stability. His passing is a loss for Europe. He said on numerous occasions that the homeland of Europeans should be Europe, not small national homelands. Habermas thought big.
In Catalonia, we have political debates of limited scope. The emphasis has been placed on secondary matters, and the main ones have been forgotten. With one exception: the approval of the 2026 budget. Politics must be at the service of the citizens, not the parties. As Unamuno said, "Catalans are undone by aesthetics."
The approval of the budget requires the positive vote of ERC, a vote that ERC initially refused to give due to the lack of an explicit commitment from the PSC—with a date and procedure—regarding the collection of personal income tax. This tax currently depends on the central government, which refuses to finalize the transfer for an understandable political reason: its weakness in Congress.
However, there is an insurmountable practical issue in the short term: collecting personal income tax requires an administrative structure that does not exist and must be mobilized. The Catalan Tax Agency is far from having the necessary capacity, and providing it with the resources and personnel—high-level personnel—for this will take time. Hiring and training two thousand people is not easy and, without sufficient time, impossible. And doing so without guarantees is a risk that cannot be taken, due to the potential loss of tax revenue. Furthermore, it is undeniable that the tax authorities are efficient, and lowering the level of professionalism would be a mistake. More important than collection is ensuring the automatic distribution process. Which we already have.
If there are no good questions, there can be no good answers. The same is true for proposals: if they are not solid, there can be no good results. Regarding financing, there are two key issues that have been overlooked. First, ordinality must be guaranteed by law, which is currently only guaranteed until 2026. Second, this principle must be based on population, not on an "adjusted" population. Maintaining the adjustment would allow the central government to obtain the results it desires by applying different criteria.
At the end of last week, we reached a stalemate in the negotiations. And one striking fact is how other important issues for the country and its citizens have been sidelined. There are teachers' strikes due to problems in education; there are doctors' strikes due to deficiencies in the system; the poor performance of the commuter rail network affects two critical issues: housing and productivity. These are essential services that are being neglected. A new budget would mean an additional €4.7 billion in revenue in the future. One more reason for its approval.
From the current state of relations between the central government and the Generalitat (Catalan government), one could infer that the misalignment of priorities in the negotiations makes a plausible solution difficult. It may seem that ERC (Republican Left of Catalonia) is negotiating more according to politics than facts, more in accordance with the principle of "doing what I said and now I must maintain it to avoid damaging my image" than with what is important for the citizens.
Habermas is the philosopher of the average, a mediating figure in the service of political conciliation. He trusts in communicative rationality to restore Enlightenment optimism and confidence in the political agora. As Thomas McCarthy says, developing an idea of Habermas's: "Formally correct procedures can legitimize decisions only if they are part of the political system recognized as legitimate, because they are supported by accepted foundations." The discussion between ERC and the Generalitat does not operate within this framework: they disagree on the details and not on the concepts of what has been agreed upon.
Oriol Junqueras has had problems within the party. I dare say that for this reason he tries to show consistency in his commitments. However, this should not condition everything, or even be too much of a factor. Broadening the framework of the negotiation would be plausible because it would allow it to translate into results. This is possibly what Habermas would do in his place: we seek a comprehensive agreement on what is currently possible and postpone the final agreement on those specific issues that today prove impossible, such as, for example, income tax revenue. Let the ERC leader think and draw his own conclusions. Habermas can be useful as inspiration in this negotiation.
On Wednesday, the Catalan government and ERC did what was necessary: broaden the scope of negotiations, eliminate red lines—income tax revenue is important, but not essential—and give themselves more time. That this is happening is cause for satisfaction, in this case, a shift in politics towards results. Politicians demonstrating common sense inspires confidence in citizens. No lectures for anyone, but a return to rationality is welcome.
