En Comú announce that the agreement for the budgets will be closed this week

After allowing the processing of the accounts in spite of CUP's opposition, En Comú leader Jéssica Albiach has announced this Tuesday on RTVE that the agreement with the Catalan Government over the budgets will be closed this week. "Catalonia will have a budget", she stated, before explaining that the pact will be closed in the coming days. After weeks of negotiations, the agreement has already been sealed while waiting to negotiate some details that Albiach has said "are not transcendental". She explained that they have obtained €80m for mental health, €50m for the public dentist, "more money for trains to promote green mobility" or a bonus for cleaning staff who worked during the peak months of the crisis of the coronavirus, as ARA advanced on Monday. "This will benefit more than 5,000 people," she stressed.

On this last point, agreed directly between En Comú MP and lead negotiator Joan Carles Gallego and the Catalan Economy minister Jaume Giró on Friday in a meeting they held in a hotel on Via Laietana, Albiach confirmed that they have negotiated with the Presidency Department and also with the Department of Economy. Thus, she quashed rumours that En Comú only negotiated with JxCat, as some JxCat leaders had claimed. "JxCat is a polyphonic force and if it were for some of its leaders we would not have budgets neither in Catalonia, nor in the State nor in Barcelona," she said.

On the possibility that the agreements will not be fulfilled due to JxCat's reluctance, Albiach said that they have president Pere Aragonès's word that this will not be the case. "We have an agreement with the president and, therefore, with all the Government" she made clear. "What surprises me is that one of the coalition partners is doing everything it can to ensure that Catalonia does not have a budget, and we will not be provoked", she added in this regard.

With regard to the items dedicated to projects that En Comú does not support –such as the €120m investment in the Hard Rock casino complex– Albiach has said that "the debate was whether we had budgets or not" and that they will work "to bury this project". "They are not our budgets and we cannot fix the prevailing inertia in three weeks," she said, before noting that they have also achieved €1bn for housing policies. Be that as it may, Albiach has pointed out that their support for the budget does not imply that they will become a stable partner for the government. "We have not come to give stability to the Government, but to the citizenship", she reiterated after criticising the executive for "fulfilling the worst of the forecasts". She has also avoided speculating on participating in the government after they opened the door to do so during the investiture debate if JxCat was kicked out.