Twenty years of "You have a problem and it's called 3%"

Barcelona"You have a problem and that problem is called 3%." With this phrase, Pasqual Maragall shook up Catalan politics exactly twenty years ago in a speech as president of the Generalitat from the Parliament. It was February 24, 2005 and a special plenary session was being held following the The collapse in the Carmel of Barcelona after an accident during the construction of the tunnel for metro line 5, which caused a political crisis in the country. After an episode of tension and accusations of disrespect between the president and the head of the opposition, Artur Mas, he exploded, accusing CiU of corruption in the awarding of public works contracts. How did this condition the political scene and how was it experienced in the chamber?

"He has completely lost his temper," replied Mas, who warned him that he had started "the legislature to hell" and, annoyed, asked him to withdraw the statement. Maragall agreed to withdraw it because "Catalonia has very important things to do," one of them the Statute (for which a large majority was needed), but a few days later CiU filed a complaint for libel that it ended up withdrawing after the president's rectification. Frontline witnesses of those days explain to ARA how they experienced them and what was going on behind the scenes. At that time, Montserrat Tura was Minister of the Interior and in conversation with this newspaper she recalls: "[The Government] was less taken by surprise than the press reflected," she says. Thus, she relates that this event "was framed in the context of public works and how Jordi Pujol's government had awarded them." And, Tura adds, Convergència had a "fierce attitude, denying responsibility and accusing the new government of being incapable and useless."

Now, the former Minister of the Interior explains about Maragall's accusation: "Someone had calculations in the ministries, we saw inexplicable things, it had come out in meetings," she comments, but making it clear that the fact that Maragall "said it and could not give concrete examples" led to a difficult situation. "We had tried to prevent the Minister Nadal [of Territorial Policy and Public Works] from being reprimanded and there was the possibility of a reprimand for the president. We had to strike a balance," says Tura, who says that the accusations of crimes were not "mature enough" until a few years later, when the Cas9 Palau 2 emerged. However, today the macro-cause of 3%, which broke out between 2014 and 2015 as a result of the Petrum operation, has not yet been judged and is still pending trial in the National Court.

The reaction of CiU

"But what is he saying?", the Convergent benches asked, however. "Stunned", "consternation" and the feeling that what Maragall was doing was "a flight forward" is how it was experienced from the benches of what was the main opposition party, according to sources from the parliamentary group of CiU at that time. "Saying it in the Parliament without proof or a complaint is a stretch, it was brutal," they add, and make it clear that this "was the beginning of putting into doubt a whole long political stage of 23 years" led by Jordi Pujol. In the opinion of the Convergents, the then parliamentary spokesman, Felip Puig, had "destroyed" the then Minister of Territorial Policy, Joaquim Nadal, and "the only way to redirect the debate was with this" of 3%, they believe.

"I was surprised that he made the serious and forceful statement in the hemicycle, but I was even more surprised by Mas's response to have that reference withdrawn by threatening to use the Statute as blackmail. It worked for him," says the then deputy for Iniciativa Dolors Camats, recalling the "tension." And she adds what it felt like in the tripartite executive: "Government officials told you that there were companies that approached you to say "And now who do we give the 3% to?"". For this reason, she was not "surprised" when Maragall said that there was corruption in Convergència, since Rafel Ribó had already reported cases when he was leading Iniciativa.

In any case, Convergència sources emphasize that this famous phrase "ravaged" relations quite a bit, but did not affect the statutory process. "The damage was already done and the tunnel debate was changed for the debate on party financing," they maintain. They experienced it as "unbecoming statements from a president" and remember that Mas's relations with Maragall "were already strained from the time of the City Council." In hindsight, they do admit that some "things not well done" were discovered, "some proven malpractice" and "incorrect dynamics", but "not from a political point of view."