Salvador Illa also invites the extreme right to the national pact to save education

BarcelonaSalvador Illa should launch in the "coming days" a round of contacts with parliamentary groups to promote a national pact on education that should serve to address the crisis the sector is experiencing. And in these conversations, he will also invite the far-right parties, Vox and Aliança Catalana. As the Government spokesperson, Sílvia Paneque, explained, the executive always includes all groups that make up the parliamentary arch in these types of calls, but added that neither Vox nor Aliança Catalana "have ever attended" these meetings. "The Government prioritizes agreements with groups that do not have hate speech," added Paneque. There is no established calendar yet and the Government has not specified whether Salvador Illa himself will be at these meetings, but Paneque stated that the president's "will" is for this round to begin "as soon as possible".

The Government spokesperson appeared at a press conference after the executive council to clarify what these meetings would be like, after the Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau, had rejected hours earlier that the far-right parties would participate in this round of contacts. In statements to TV3 collected by the Efe agency, Dalmau had stated that it is "not on the roadmap" of the Government to include these formations because "they come to break the system from within" and that "they dedicate themselves to pointing out problems, not solving them". "With different words, but we are saying the same thing," Paneque tried to convince in the press conference.

In this sense, after Dalmau's words, Vox had labeled the Government as "sectarian", but had also reaffirmed its position of not participating in this debate: "Their model is totally contradictory to ours, we would really go there to waste time," stated the spokesperson for the party in Parliament, Joan Garriga. Aliança Catalana has not commented.

In contrast, the main opposition group, Junts, has already confirmed that it will participate in the meetings for this national pact on education. ERC will also be there. In fact, both parties had committed to moving forward with a national agreement on educational matters. However, the secretary general of Junts, Jordi Turull, has warned: "If we want to reach agreements, it cannot be led by the protagonist of this failure". The spokesperson for ERC in Parliament, Ester Capella, in turn, has argued that this debate should go "from the bottom up" and "not from the top-down bodies and having the usual people talk": "It must address the country as a whole and society as a whole".

From the Comuns, Jéssica Albiach has set the reduction of ratios as one of the main measures they will bring to this round of contacts. However, the leader of the Comuns in Parliament has also asked Illa to "accelerate" and to cut from four to two years the plan to air-condition the 2,530 public educational centers. From the CUP, on the other hand, they have not confirmed whether they will participate in this round of meetings. "We are tired of great pacts, great proclamations, and great headlines. What is needed are facts", stated deputy Xavier Pellicer in a press conference, who described as "contradictory" that Illa seeks "a great educational consensus" when "he has not even been capable of sitting down with the unions, as they have been demanding for some time".

The 6% in public education

In this Monday's conference, Salvador Illa also promised that he will reach 6% of public investment in education, as established by the education law approved in 2009. Currently, the Generalitat spends 4% of GDP on education. However, this Tuesday in a press conference, Paneque did not specify the time horizon the Government is working with to achieve this goal, nor where the resources will come from, although she assured that obtaining the new financing model for Catalonia "would help" to reach this 6%. "There must be a progressive incorporation of resources," she stated.