It hasn't even been a month, on March 27, I asked myself in this analysis: “Can a socialist minister improve anything about financing?” The Valencian Arcadi España had just replaced Vice President Montero, who was leaving to run as a PSOE candidate in the Andalusian electoral campaign. We wondered if a new Minister of Finance could change anything about the distribution of money, because the new minister was perfectly aware of how poorly funded the Valencian Country is. Well, we haven't had to wait long for an answer that we hoped wouldn't have to be rhetorical.Here you have it: “The new minister does not give in and Catalonia will not collect personal income tax”. Because the minister says that any transfer in collection will be made within the framework of the state Treasury. In other words, the Spanish government continues to not embrace Esquerra's agreement with the PSC for the investiture of Salvador Illa. It will be the State agency that will continue to have the powers in management and collection, and the Catalan agency would be a collaborating entity. Well, it's lucky that this was the federalist minister and that Sánchez and Illa have great personal and political harmony. Apart from the fact that the PSOE only goes along with improvements in self-government and believes that with the amnesty enough has been done, senior officials are a state within the State and it doesn't matter whether the PP or the PSOE governs.Meanwhile, Catalonia continues to be underfunded, far below what it pays and what it needs, and there is no room for the regional tier of personal income tax to be lowered: the PSC, Esquerra, Comuns, and the CUP voted against Junts' proposal (voted by the PP, Vox, and Aliança Catalana) to reduce personal income tax and eliminate inheritance tax. Junts knew it would lose but wants to make a point with the idea that Catalans live squeezed by taxes while other autonomies can afford tax cuts.On another note, we answer a question we asked ourselves this morning in the newspaper regarding the incident with the Vox deputy who went up to threaten the acting president of Congress during a plenary session. The question is whether the incident was an anecdote or is significant. The answer is clear: this is significant, the far-right is violent by definition and needs to discredit institutions through contempt and intimidation. They know exactly what they are doing: making it seem like they are so full of reasons that they have no choice but to lose their temper in the face of injustices. And specifically, the behavior of the Vox deputy José María Sánchez, like a madman, is perfectly conscious, because he is a judge on leave from the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community. This is the level.Good morning.

"The position is very clear," the Finance ministers keep repeating, even though the hottest part of IRPF collection is up in the air. First, it was María Jesús Montero who closed the door on the transfers agreed between ERC and PSC, and now her successor has taken on this role. Arcadi España assures that the Spanish government will not deviate from the agreement signed between Moncloa and the Generalitat in the meeting of the Bilateral Commission last July: "For all the autonomous communities and also for Catalonia, we have the will to increase management capacity, always within the framework of the State Tax Administration Agency (AEAT)." What does this mean? Basically, that the transfer to Catalonia of the collection of 100% of the IRPF is not a commitment that the state executive makes its own, and that, in any case, it will be the AEAT that will have the powers in management and collection. The Catalan Tax Agency (ATC) should settle for collaborating in "a networked tax management model," as specified in the Bilateral document.

The two councilors of the PSC of Ripoll who allowed Sílvia Orriols to approve the budgets thanks to their abstention were leaving office on Monday amid reproaches and with a clear warning to the party. "We want to state that the local branch does not share this decision in any case; what's more, it is in absolute disagreement. There is no member of the list who has shown any predisposition to take over from our councilors. This is a decision made unilaterally by the national leadership of the PSC," stated Enric Pérez and Anna Belén Avilés in a joint statement. In summary, the two councilors warned that no one from the candidacy would take over from them. Orriols resorted to irony in Wednesday's control session in the Parliament, thanking the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, for what the socialists are doing in Ripoll: "Thank you for the budgets, but above all for having dismantled the PSC, which has been a masterstroke," he snapped.

Enric Pérez and Anna Belén Avilés are no longer representatives of the PSC in the Ripoll City Council. Nor does the local socialist group exist anymore in the capital of Ripoll. The PSC Federation of the Girona regions agreed this Tuesday to liquidate the Ripoll executive and create a management committee. The leadership has made this decision after the local group closed ranks with the two councilors, who had warned that no one from the candidacy wanted to replace them because they disagree with the decision to expel them. Both resigned on Monday after the party censured them for abstaining from voting on the budgets and allowing Aliança Catalana to approve them. Their resignation has opened an unprecedented crisis in the PSC of Ripoll. The two councilors have left with reproaches to the PSC, and now the leadership will have to find people willing to take over the seat for the remaining year of the term.

Pío Cabanillas' outburst is often cited, who in the years of the Transition, leaving a stormy UCD congress, said “We have won, but we don't know who”. Something similar happens to current Catalan politics when talking about unity. We want unity, but we don't know whose. We know we have to unite, but we don't know what or whom we are referring to when we talk about us.Unity is one of those big words that, like progress or freedom, become empty concepts when they are mishandled by the political class. In general, when a leader advocates for union, they conceive of it as a concentration of forces around themselves. And that, of course, has little to do with authentic unity, which implies mutual approach, concession.I am one of those who think that unity is a false dogma that is often contrasted with division, when its opposite, in fact, is plurality. And in democracy, plurality is necessary. It is the inevitable starting point for reaching consensus, broad majorities: another type of unity, which does not imply uniformism and does not generate vetoes.In Catalonia, this kind of unity based on pluralism is necessary. Because the country has very serious problems and demands far-reaching reforms, which are impossible with a too atomized Parliament, and with a growing presence of the far-right. And this implies forming transversal majorities, which overflow the boundaries between left and right, and between sovereigntism and Spanish nationalism. I will be more precise: there are a series of issues (language, health, education, infrastructure) that should be based on a strategic agreement between the PSC, Junts, ERC, and Comuns. They are the formations that can guarantee an operational parliamentary majority.

Ripoll's politics has acquired national relevance, with media overexposure of its councilors due to the arrival of Aliança Catalana. This week, the municipal spokesperson for the PSC, Enric Pérez (Ripoll, 1980), has experienced this. After his group abstained and allowed Silvia Orriols' budget approval, the indignant socialist leadership summoned the two councilors, and they put their positions at the party's disposal.

Salou is suffering a political storm following the case of falsified or erroneous resumes. What has happened in this municipality in Tarragonès? Just as it happened with the former deputy secretary of the PP Noelia Núñez, who resigned due to liesBerrio did not submit the documentation within the two-month period, but she did so at the end of March, explaining that she had not had access to her corporate email. However, Berrio is not the only one involved in the resume case; other councilors were also implicated, some of whom still have qualifications that they have not accredited or rectified. Councilors from the government Júlia Gómez (PSC), Noelia Izquierdo (PSC), and Marçal Curto (ERC) had accreditation problems, as did opposition councilors Ignacio Duran (from the local party USAP) and the non-attached former Vox member Josefa Aguirre. In the plenary session, the mayor committed to dismissing anyone who lied, even though in practice it has only focused on Berrio.

Earthquake in l'Ametlla de Mar. Junts and the PSC had agreed to share the mayoralty after ousting ERC from the municipal government with a pact between the two formations after the elections. The Junts had obtained five councilors, the same as the Republicans, but the Socialists (2) invested the former and entered the executive. The quid pro quo was that the PSC would assume the mayoralty at the end of the term. So far, so normal. What is not so usual is that the socialist councilor now does not want to invest the head of her party's list. And this has led to a crisis not only in the PSC, but has reached the government itself and will result in an unagreed-upon handover of the mayoralty.

The PSC and Units per Avançar are the best-matched couple in Catalan politics. The alliance between these two political forces began in 2017, when the socialists started to want to get closer to the skeptical nationalists (or even scared) with the break-away approach of independence and who had already begun to miss CiU. The leader of Units, Ramon Espadaler, embodied this profile: former minister in the government of Jordi Pujol and Artur Mas, he launched in June of that year what he then defined as a "Catalanist" and Christian democratic platform that, in Catalonia in the months leading up to 1-O, advocated for dialogue with Spain with the backing of former members of Unió. The then first secretary of the PSC, Miquel Iceta, did not hesitate to make them an offer to run together in the elections. The wedding was officiated in a hotel in front of the PSC headquarters on Nicaragua street under the slogan "Alliance for common sense and Catalanism" and was the prelude to the move to recruit centrist profiles that Salvador Illa deployed when he landed in the Generalitat. However, and almost ten years after that understanding, Units does not renounce to make its mark to avoid being swallowed by the socialist tide, now that the PSC governs at all four levels of administration.

Carlos Cuerpo and Arcadi España have moved up a rung in the Spanish government after the departure of María Jesús Montero. The hitherto number two in the Spanish executive, however, not only hands over the first vice-presidency and the Ministry of Finance, but also the negotiating power with the so-called Catalan file. Specifically, Arcadi España will be the one to tackle the hot potato of materializing the new financing and reopening talks with Esquerra after the transfer of the IRPF derailed. España was one of the strong men of Ximo Puig's Valencian government and those who know him define him as a convinced federalist and Valencianist, as well as being a firm defender of new regional financing. In fact, he endorses the reform that Montero agreed with ERC. And what do PSC and ERC think of the new minister? The Republicans view him favorably for giving a new "opportunity" to negotiations.In Palau they also look hopefully at the new minister, whom a voice from the Catalan socialists describes as "receptive" to the demands of Catalonia, many of them coinciding with those of the Valencian Country."Arcadi is social democracy made politician, dialogue made ruler, common sense made person," wrote former Valencian president Ximo Puig in a message on X after his appointment was made public. In statements to el ARA, he reaffirms: "He is a person with an open disposition, without closed dogmatisms, with the capacity to listen and empathy." España was Puig's chief of staff during his time in Madrid, also when he was general secretary of the PSPV and when he presided over the Generalitat Valenciana, and subsequently served as minister of Territorial Policy and also of Finance. "Federalism is part of his political culture," defends Puig, who recalls that he is one of the people who has most defended new regional financing within the PSOE. In fact, this is one of the issues that Esquerra values.

If you've been following the story of how the Government withdrew the budget proposal it had submitted to Parliament at the last minute, it won't surprise you that today we begin by emphasizing that The elections in Andalusia now have a date: May 17th.

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.

The seal on the agreement was put by Salvador Illa and Oriol Junqueras in a meeting of just over two hours at the Palau de la Generalitat on Tuesday afternoon. But the pact had been being forged since the previous weekend after days of deadlock. At the Palau and at the PSC headquarters, the strategy of buying time to avoid a parliamentary defeat that would have left the executive shaken eventually prevailed. The party's number 2, Lluïsa Moret, had a lot to do with it, explain various sources to ARA. But to limit the damage, the socialists demanded, in return, a commitment from the republicans to stop positioning the IRPF as a red line. All this, to reset the clock. To get here, however, the conversations went through ups and downs, from tense meetings to lunches and homemade doughnuts to save the negotiation.

A well-known economist assured me this week that there would be a Catalan government budget for 2026. He was very convinced. In fact, he had no doubt whatsoever, after applying game theory, a branch of mathematics used to model situations involving negotiation, conflict, competition, cooperation, and other similar interactions. This theory aims to determine the best possible strategy for each player and the expected outcome of each situation. Games can be zero-sum (the gains or losses of some players are offset by the gains or losses of others) or non-zero-sum, meaning everyone can win or lose.

Politics often has reasons that reason cannot comprehend. It seems that the PSC and ERC are in agreement to try to reach a budget that the country needs after so much frustration. There shouldn't be fundamental disagreements on the content, but Junqueras is setting a condition that depends on the Spanish government: the transfer of personal income tax management to the Catalan government. An old and reasonable aspiration that, in addition to its economic value, also has symbolic value, which the PSC seems to share, and which is generating irritation in the Spanish autonomous communities.

Albert Dalmau (Barcelona, 1990) visits l'ARA after a week in which, despite everything, the Government has saved a match ball and has gained time to approve the budgets.The government yesterday made a gesture quite unprecedented in Catalan political history, which is the withdrawal of the budgets. Is it a tactical withdrawal?

This morning, around eight o'clock, the Catalan Government and Esquerra Republicana staged the pact they reached last night, which we discussed yesterday in our analysis and which we anticipated this morning in the print edition of ARA:

The approval of a regional government's annual budget should be addressed as a priority, separate from other political demands that fall under different institutional purviews. When public accounts are extended, the administration loses the capacity to update programs, adjust budget items to meet new needs, and implement more ambitious public policies. In particular, increasing social spending—in areas such as healthcare, education, and support for vulnerable groups—requires a current and fully operational budgetary framework. Conditioning the approval of this budget on demands whose fulfillment primarily falls to the central government introduces a deadlock that ultimately affects citizens directly, who see policies that are indeed within the regional government's jurisdiction delayed or limited.

The Catalan government's budget continues to hang by a thread. If the PSC and ERC don't find a solution before Friday, the budget approved by Salvador Illa's administration two weeks ago will collapse. Republicans and Socialists are maintaining open dialogue to try to avoid a clash before Friday, and they held more meetings this Tuesday: they met this afternoon at the Palau de la Generalitat—among those present were the Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau, and the ERC's Director General, Lluís Salvadó—and are scheduled to meet again this afternoon. Two scenarios are on the table: that the Catalan government withdraws the budget or that ERC withdraws its amendment to the entire budget. Both options are designed to prevent the budget from failing and buy time to try to get the negotiations back on track. At this point, however, the Catalan government maintains that it is not willing to withdraw the budget proposal. "We are not there at this time," the Minister of Economy, Alícia Romero, stated in an interview with RTVE. "We are at this stage and we are not considering any other," added the Government spokesperson and Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque, at a press conference, who called for "prudence" and "responsibility" in these final days of negotiations before Friday.

ERC invested Salvador Illa and Pedro Sánchez, and it is true that the only way for the Republicans to have any influence at the moment is for both of them to remain at the head of their governments. Esquerra has often been criticized for easily caving in to the demands of the PSC and PSOE, and these criticisms have often been justified. This baggage likely played a role in Illa's decision to force the legislature's hand by putting the Generalitat's budget to a vote – next Friday – without having finalized the agreement with his most important partner.