Pere Aragonès often says that he has a notable love for cooking. He makes up for his lack of enthusiasm for sports and hobbies that allow him to disconnect and oxygenate his head in the kitchen. He says that fiddling around with pots and pans relaxes him. Reviewing recipes, he says, even helps him combat insomnia. Cooking requires control of time and temperature, something that he has missed in managing his final stretch of term and that has precipitated his resignation. This Monday he announced that he is leaving “out of responsibility” after achieving only 20 deputies in Sunday’s elections, which he himself described as “very bad results.”
The epilogue of Aragonès’s political career simmered for months, as the Esquerra leadership observed a worsening of the polls. He has ended up burned by the terrible results he achieved this Sunday: a fall of 13 seats in three years. An electoral capital that ends up mashed. He president He states that he is leaving because he sees a “new stage” as necessary and says he wants to “facilitate the transition.” Resigning is an unusual gesture in the Iberian political arena, but Aragonès was always somewhat advanced.
During his promotion phase, he broke records for precocity. He was the youngest vice president, at 36 years old, and he had to occupy the acting presidency when Quim Torra was disqualified for a crime of disobedience. That did not sit well with Junts, and the suspicion has not been erased. It did not help to cool the rivalry that, shortly thereafter, there were elections and Aragonès won the presidency at the youngest age he had ever seen: 38 years old. Now, at 41, he will also be the youngest former Catalan president.
At the beginning of the year, Aragonès added salt and pepper to his Government, and assured that with a touch-up he avoided anticipating elections and served to conclude the electoral cycle with force, until February 2025. To shield himself, he incorporated and promoted people with whom he has complete trust. His advisor Sergi Sabrià became vice-minister of Strategy and Communication and promoted counselor Laura Vilagrà to the position of vice-president of the Government. His rivals from the PSC and Junts reminded him that every day he let pass without calling elections was worse for Esquerra’s interests.
The parapet had to serve to protect itself from attacks coming from outside, and to try to avoid internal punctures. The now president in office he has had in Oriol Junqueras, president of ERC, a rival at home. In his day, Junqueras appointed him Secretary of Economy of the Generalitat and gave him the power of Esquerra, but the political growth given by the disciple has ended up making the head of the party uncomfortable. Aragonès, whom his entourage defines as “an extremely hard-working person,” relies on his wife, Janina Juli, who as a young woman was linked to the JNC, the youth of Convergència. They are parents of a girl, Clàudia.
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Aragonès comes from a wealthy family from Pineda de Mar, in the Maresme, the northern coast of Barcelona. The Aragonès enjoy a good position and have amassed their wealth first through businesses related to the textile industry that grew in the shadow of the Franco regime (one of the grandfathers of the president was mayor of the Movement) and later driven by the hotel boom. He also has among his ancestors immigrants from Almería and exiles by the dictatorship, a mix that recalled the president at his investiture.
Since Junts decided to leave the Generalitat coalition government in October 2022, Aragonès and his team have had to balance to clear up a continuous battery of criticism and reproaches. “Junts was the partner and ended up being the worst opposition,” says a person close to Aragonès. “He is very meticulous, he wants to control everything and few things escape him,” says a member of the Presidency area.
The support to be able to approve this year’s budgets escaped him, something that, in the end, precipitated the electoral call. He had the help of Salvador Illa and the PSC, but it was not enough. The drought that has hit Catalonia and forced water restrictions to be ordered was a blow to an Executive that was already limping. The poor results of primary school students reported in the PISA report and the loss of use and knowledge of Catalan, the poor development of renewable energies, the strike of prison officials after the murder of a cook or the fiasco in the call of a public opposition process are issues that have burned in the hands of the president.
To corroborate his good gastronomic hand, Aragonès uses his social networks to post photos and videos in which he appears dressed in an apron. He wields the knife with his left hand and skillfully chops onions. Those who have put his cooking skills to the test explain that the same is used to imitate the noodle and rice stews that his grandmother taught him, which he launches with the spherifications popularized by chef Ferran Adrià. Aragonès was able to verify this Monday that the withdrawal dish is served alone, without accompaniment. No one from the party was at his side when he announced his farewell.
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