Catalan Socialists Open Nov. 29 Campaign on Housing and Pensions

Leaders of the PSC (Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya, the Catalan Socialists) opened their campaign for Spain’s Nov. 29 general election at a Barcelona rally on Thursday by presenting the vote as a choice between Pedro Sánchez and a government of the PP and Vox. Housing, pensions, Catalan self-government and the Catalan language were the issues they put forward, according to the newspaper Ara.

The event took place in the auditorium of the Illa Diagonal shopping center. Speakers included Salvador Illa, president of the Generalitat (the Catalan government), Jordi Hereu, acting minister of Industry and Tourism, and Barcelona mayor Jaume Collboni.

How the PSC pitched housing

Housing took most of the attention. Ara reports that Illa and Hereu answered criticism over rising rents in recent years, even though Socialists lead the Spanish government, the Generalitat and Barcelona’s city hall. Raquel Sánchez, a former housing minister and the party’s Senate candidate for Barcelona, said the measures the Socialists applied “work” and that flat prices in the city have fallen.

Collboni argued that a PP and Vox government would have made things worse. In Ara’s account he said rents today would be 400 euros higher if those parties had governed.

Pensions, wages and transport

The speakers credited the Sánchez government with raising the minimum wage and pensions and with cutting public transport prices. They also criticized the PP and Vox for their objections to the current pension system. Illa described the system as solidarity between generations and said his salary and Hereu’s help pay the pensions of their parents.

Illa and Hereu presented Sánchez as the guarantor of Catalan self-government and the Catalan language against the PP and Vox. Illa said the election comes down to Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Santiago Abascal on one side and Sánchez on the other. Hereu was the only one who gave his speech entirely in Catalan, Ara notes.

Criticism of other parties

The PSC speakers also aimed at parties on the left. Illa said the Front Ampli, Podem and Esquerra Republicana seem to have given up already, and Hereu said they had damaged their own space. Illa asked left-leaning voters to back the PSC for strategic reasons. He also criticized Junts for saying it belongs to neither bloc, telling parties in the middle to step aside.

What the rally left out

Ara reports that the leaders avoided topics that could cost the party votes, in particular rail and high-speed infrastructure such as Rodalies (Catalonia’s commuter rail) and the AVE. The Urda rail accident and the Ceuta migration crisis were not mentioned, the paper says.

What’s at stake for the PSC in Catalonia

Catalonia has 48 seats in the Congress at stake. In the previous Spanish election the PSC won 19 of them, and Ara reports that the party wants to top that number even though some polls predict a certain decline. Ara describes strong optimism in Socialist ranks in Catalonia, while most polls point to a defeat for the party at the national level. Hereu said the aim was a “historic victory” for the PSC.

The campaign runs until the vote on Nov. 29.

Source: Ara