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

BarcelonaSalvador Illa is expected to launch a round of contacts with parliamentary groups in the "coming days" to promote a national pact on education. He will also invite the far-right parties, Vox and Aliança Catalana, to these talks. As explained by the Government spokesperson, Sílvia Paneque, the executive always invites all groups that make up the parliamentary spectrum, but she added that neither Vox nor Aliança "have ever attended" these calls. "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 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". "In different words, but we are saying the same thing," Paneque tried to convince at the press conference.

In this sense, Vox had labeled the Government as "sectarian" after Dalmau's words, but has 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 formation in Parliament, Joan Garriga. Aliança Catalana has not commented.

On the other hand, 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 formations had committed to moving forward with a national agreement on educational matters. However, the secretary general of Junts, Jordi Turull, warned: "If we want to reach agreements, the protagonist of this failure cannot lead it".

From the Comuns, Jéssica Albiach has set the reduction of ratios as one of the main measures they will bring to this debate. However, the leader of the Comuns has also asked Illa to "accelerate" and to cut from 4 to 2 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 big pacts, big proclamations, and big headlines. What is needed are facts," stated deputy Xavier Pellicer in a press conference, who called it "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, just as established by the education law approved in 2009. However, this Tuesday in a press conference, Paneque did not specify what time horizon the Government is working with to achieve this goal, nor where the resources will come from. "There must be a progressive incorporation of resources," she stated. "To incorporate resources in a priority manner through budgets and financing," she added.