Last night, Esquerra Republicana faced a defeat that had already been announced for days, but in the face of which the campaign manual determines that you cannot give a hint of acceptance ahead of time. The group led by Oriol Junqueras and whose headliner was now president In office, Pere Aragonès lost 13 seats, remaining at 20, and leaving more than 180,000 votes compared to the 2021 elections, which were held with the restrictions of the pandemic. The head of the Government He announced that his party does not plan to enter into any pact game and that it will go to the opposition. Furthermore, Aragonès opened the door to leaving the front line of politics.
“We have obtained some bad results. I would say very bad results,” said Aragonès, shortly before 11 p.m., flanked by all of his advisors and the first swords of the party. “The work of Government left-wing and republican and the commitment to negotiation has not been sufficiently valued or citizens consider that now it is up to someone else to lead the new stage,” added the also national coordinator of ERC. He president In office, he thus shows his 12 deputies the door to the desert path of the opposition, an announcement that was received with approval by his co-partisans. Junqueras, next to him, did not intervene and left all the focus on Aragonès.
The now acting president of the Generalitat did not have any qualms to emphasize that he had no reason to be happy. “The opposition to the Republican Government, the PSC and Junts, has won; polarization has won and it will be up to you to manage the new stage that begins today,” he assured. “It is time to assume individual responsibilities,” Aragonès added, thus opening the door to putting an end to a front-line political career that he began as a deputy in 2006, for a total of five terms.
The arithmetic of the results has made it easier for the Republicans to send the hot potato of managing a very devilish outlook to their two main rivals. The bloc of pro-independence parties, including the xenophobic Aliança Catalana, is far from the absolute majority of 68 deputies—it remains at 59 seats—and that takes pressure off Junqueras’s party to bind itself to any compromise in that axis. The tripartite together with PSC and Comuns Sumar is viable (it adds up to exactly 68), but for now that door is closed.
The party has already called a press conference for this Monday at 12:30 p.m. where it will assess the results of elections that link with two previous setbacks (the municipal elections and the advance of last year’s general elections) and leave the party in a very difficult situation. precarious ahead of the elections to the European Parliament. The drama has been especially deep in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, where it lost seven percentage points (almost 142,000 fewer votes) and 12 deputies. This is a harsh setback to the strategy of the leadership led by Junqueras and Marta Rovira, which wanted to “expand the base” of the independence movement by penetrating the traditional fiefdoms of the socialists.
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From the beginning of the afternoon, Junqueras’ party did a reality exercise and its spokesperson, Raquel Sans, accepted that things were not going well. “It will not be a good night for Esquerra Republicana,” said the also head of the list for Tarragona. “It will be data that will force us to reflect,” added the now solemnly elected deputy, who appeared around 8:10 p.m., shortly after the TV3 survey was announced.
Party sources showed last night their perplexity at the low turnout, which was especially felt in traditionally pro-independence areas. In the leadership of Esquerra they believe that Carles Puigdemont’s candidacy has taken its toll on them not so much in terms of stealing voters, but because he has ended up giving his people more reasons not to mobilize. Aragonès also regretted the emergence of the xenophobic independence formation Aliança Catalana in the Parliament, which in provinces such as Girona or Lleida took seats at the expense of the Republicans and not of Junts (which repeated the 2021 results in number of seats) despite the abyss ideological.
ERC does not benefit from management
The campaign had not been easy for the Republicans, determined that the story revolve around the Government’s action. In the ranks of the Executive led by Aragonès, the idea was established that citizens would reward the responsibility shown, for example, by staying on board despite Junts jumping overboard from the coalition in October 2021. There was no rally in which the now president in office did not mention this idea that, in view of the results, did not resonate with either his voter or the general public.
Precisely this lack of connection with citizens was one of the great shortcomings of the Government republican monocolor. Despite promoting an interesting social agenda from the Executive, with great advances such as free childcare for the last year or free menstrual products, the party was unable to obtain electoral benefits.
The Republicans were trapped between the polarization that was created from the beginning between the PSC and Puigdemont. Aragonès tried to draw an intermediate path that did not fully crystallize and was not able to find a way forward. The results return ERC to percentages of support similar to 2006, when it obtained 14% of the votes (416,355 votes).
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