BarcelonaIt was so urgent for the Spanish government to begin the renewal of RTVE’s board of directors, that it did not even want to postpone this week’s vote in Congress, while the list of deaths confirmed by DANA kept growing in the Valencian Country . “Our job is to legislate,” justified the PSOE spokesman, Patxi López, for not having to recognize that the precarious majority they have in the lower house forces them not to miss any opportunities.
Among the names of the new council, two stand out, at least in Catalonia, because of who they are, but especially because of who proposes them. Miquel Calçada and Sergi Sol are the councilors chosen by Junts and ERC, two parties that show that they are also looking for seats in Madrid. Hostages of their contradictions, they live with the threats to bring down Pedro Sánchez and the pacts to participate in State bodies, at the hand of the Spanish government. “We have lived seasons with more or less presence of our language, but the reality is that RTVE in Catalonia has been above all a place from which many programs have been produced for state consumption”, Pilar Calvo (Junts) points out to justify his group’s decision to join the agreement. Exactly the same argument to which, for example, Oscar Pierre, the last director of RTVE appointed by CiU in 2012, resorted.
The contradiction is particularly bloody in the case of Junts, which has just left a congress in which they consecrated the “confrontation” with the State as a long-term strategy. The “sole objective” of the negotiation, they wrote in their presentations, will be “advancing towards independence”. Being part of RTVE’s board of directors probably does not come under this heading, but Carles Puigdemont’s have added a tailor’s drawer to their strategic corpus: they will also negotiate to approve “measures that recognize plurinationality” and to “improve the well-being of Catalans”. Some will think that there is not much difference between this and the fish in the cave of the CiU that also had councilors at RTVE, but Junts maintains that they have nothing to do.
Members of the PSOE
ERC has learned to live with the label of “partner” of the PSOE in recent years. The Republicans decided a long time ago that it was better to make money from it, and placing Sol on RTVE is an example. Unlike Calçada, Sergi Sol has been a politically important person for his party as Oriol Junqueras’ right-hand man for many years and RTVE is a way of entry into a place that has so far been off-limits to the Republicans. Is it better for Catalonia that Calçada and Sol form part of the board of directors of the State’s public radio and television? And that the commons have chosen the ex-deputy and ex-coordinator of ICV Marta Ribas? Or the PSOE and Podemos people also marked politically? If the dynamics are the same, other bodies such as the CNMV, the Electoral Board or the Court of Auditors still need to be renewed in the State.
The details of the week
For the first time in years, Sílvia Paneque was not in Girona for Sant Narcís. On October 29 it was his turn to be at the Palau de la Generalitat for the meeting of the executive council and the press conference. Out of microphones, the spokeswoman of the Government was not about to deny – cordially – this coincidence and to display the pin with the city’s fly. Will he propose that the meeting be held in Girona if there is again Sant Narcís in 2025?
On Wednesday, Junts and the PSOE agreed to abolish the electricity tax. A decision that left-wing members of the Spanish government did not like and neither did a protester who, without getting off his motorcycle, stood up to shout against the pact on Thursday from the passage where the party has its headquarters in Barcelona. He was not, however, a stranger: “He often comes to protest”, acknowledge party workers accustomed to his cries.
