proposed by the central government and the progressive forces in the Congress of Deputies. Only a few years ago that vote would have been unthinkable, since Junts – even in its previous convergent versions – defended brave anti-eviction measures or against the cutting of fundamental supplies due to non-payment… we are going as if Clement Attlee’s post-second world war Labor party had lorded over the Catalonia governed by Carles Puigdemont, Quim Torra or even the latter Artur Mas, whose transition from social cuts to the left did not help it to avoid.
This conversion to social democracy has turned out to be nothing more than a marriage for interest, for power. And it is that he process It provided an excellent smoke screen behind which the Catalan right could hide past miseries and corruption by raising the flag of progressivism. Allying with Esquerra or seeking the votes of the CUP forced one to follow the script of a Catalonia of the future that would make the world pale with envy.
The social shield now lying in the Congress of Deputies is similar to the one that garnered the votes of convergents, republicans, socialists, commoners and cupaires. That text from 2015. The Constitutional Court partially suspended the articles. But President Quim Torra reactivated part of the text by decree four years later and in 2022 the entire left and Junts voted in favor of a new law in Parliament. The last word on its compliance was always up to what the judge ruled. We must not forget that the social shield decreed by the Government of Pedro Sánchez due to the 2021 pandemic.
The new rejected measures that, according to the right, “shield squatters” – and that now leave 13,000 Catalan families without protection, says the Third Sector Taula – should lead to cases of occupation due to non-payment when the owner is a bank, investment fund or an individual with more than 10 homes. Never when it is a first or second residence. The Catalan law reformed in 2022 imposed social rents on large tenants in the event of squatting by evicted vulnerable families. But that was when Junts defended those it now calls “squatters”, at least those who lived and worked in Catalonia at the time.
The non-return of Puigdemont, the increase in voting intention of the Catalan Aliança and the political orphanhood of the employers’ association Foment del Treball, in short, the call of blood has made . The “Southern Denmark” that sovereign Catalonia was going to become at the hands of Artur Mas (in his last presidential incarnation) has given way to the one that calls for the elimination of the inheritance tax, or calls for the reduction of the maximum personal income tax rate. With gestures, statements and voting sense, the spokesperson for Junts in Congress, Miriam Nogueras, leaves no room for error. The new script changes the demands.
