Carles Puigdemont has reacted with a three-page letter to the agreement between Esquerra Republicana and the PSC to invest president from the Generalitat to Salvador Illa. The former Catalan president, who left Spain in 2017 to avoid being tried, maintains that his will to return to Catalonia is firm, despite the fact that there is an arrest warrant for him, and directly accuses ERC of having facilitated his possible arrest soon. In a long message that he published this Saturday on the social network X, he himself apologizes for the length and asks for patience to be able to understand it, Puigdemont criticizes ERC’s decision to invest Illa for the political effect it entails, alludes to “the negative impact that a Spanish-speaking government will have for Catalonia”, and for the personal cost it may entail for him: he indicates that the decision of the ERC membership, which voted this Friday to validate the agreement reached by the party’s leadership with the PSC, makes “arrest a real possibility in very few days.”
The leader of Junts came in second place in the Catalan elections of May 12, with seven seats less than Salvador Illa, but has insisted on the need to articulate an independence front, Junts, ERC and the CUP, to block the election of a president of the PSC. The agreement between Esquerra and the socialists puts an end to Puigdemont’s hopes and puts him in the dilemma of having to fulfil his commitment to return to Catalonia, despite the fact that for the moment he remains outside the application of the amnesty law. former president He has repeatedly stated in public that his return date is set for when there is an investiture debate in the Parliament. Josep Rull, the president of the Parliament, predicts that the investiture debate could be held next Wednesday or Thursday. Puigdemont is returning not to take back the leadership of the Generalitat, but to attend the investiture of Salvador Illa as a guest. In his letter, Puigdemont points out that before making a statement he “preferred” to wait for the ERC militants to be able to vote on the agreement so that he could not be accused of “emotional blackmail”.
Junts per Catalunya has urgently held a meeting of its executive this Saturday and has issued a statement in which it expresses its support for Puigdemont and stresses that his return to Spain is “a political return, not a personal one”. The party also makes a brief assessment of the agreement between ERC and the PSC, and regrets that Esquerra “has opted for the worst possible alternative”. Junts claims to be “the leading force for the independence movement” and warns that it will assert its status as a “decisive force” in the Parliament and in the Congress of Deputies.
In the letter he made public this Saturday, the former Catalan president points out that he feels like the victim of “a great strain” and reveals that he is aware that his return could mean going to prison “for who knows how long”. He confesses that he has received advice to “reconsider” his intention to return, but insists that there is no turning back and once again attacks ERC, when he lists the reasons why he cannot allow himself to reconsider crossing the border. He says that “given what has happened with the scandal of the dirty war campaigns organised by ERC” (in reference to the case of the posters to ridicule the Maragall brothers), he has reason to fear that there would be a second part of the “ignominious campaign” that he suffered after the Catalan elections of 2017, when he announced that he would return to Catalonia and did not fulfil the commitment.
The announced reappearance of Puigdemont in Catalonia carries a powerful emotional charge for the independence movement. In his letter, he himself calls for his possible arrest to awaken “confrontation against a demophobic regime” and asks to “pull out” instead of “shedding tears”. If he is arrested while on his way to the Parliament, the question arises of how this arrest will affect the development of the investiture session of Illa. Marta Rovira, general secretary of ERC, has already stressed that she fails to see “what political sense” there is in Puigdemont allowing himself to be arrested now, after seven years of evading justice. Jéssica Albiach, leader of the Comuns, has stated that a return of Puigdemont “does not change the results of the election night”, but opens the door to supporting a postponement of the plenary session if Puigdemont cannot sit in the seat. “He does not come in one day, two or one week”, Albiach has declared. August 26 is the deadline set by law for the Parliament to elect a president of the Generalitat. If the post is vacant by then, a repeat election is automatically called for October 13.
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The PSC and ERC were interested in speeding up an agreement, precisely, to have room for manoeuvre later if Puigdemont’s emergence interferes with the dynamics of the first attempt at investiture.
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