The president of the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), Oriol Junqueras, and the general coordinator of EH Bildu, Arnaldo Otegi, appeared this Friday in Barcelona after holding a meeting in which they established a common political strategy “to guarantee the national liberation” of Catalonia and the Basque Country. Both independence leaders defended the need to intensify the negotiation with the State, as a way to legitimize the separatist claims. They pointed out that the PSOE and United We Can government should be interested in strengthening ties with Esquerra and Bildu because both formations are “the only guarantee” to prevent PP and Vox from gaining control.
Esquerra has thirteen deputies in Congress and Bildu has another five representatives. The two parties decided not to support the government in the vote for the labor reform. Oblivious to the crack that this rejection opened, Otegi says he defends an “unequivocal” commitment to negotiating with the government, as a tool to overcome political clashes. And he launched a challenge to Pedro Sánchez: “He has the ball in his court to show that he can make a political agenda different from that of the right.” Despite the scant progress made by the negotiating table between the Government and the government, Junqueras appealed for “patience” and Otegi said he had “experience” to affirm that “whoever gets up from the negotiating table loses.”
On the day that Russian troops intensified the bombing of Kiev, Junqueras did not hesitate to draw similarities between Spain and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “There is a close link between the authoritarian drifts that occur in various states and corruption,” he said. “Ukraine would also sit at a dialogue table, if given the opportunity,” he added.
Otegi highlighted that the agreement between ERC and EH Bildu “is not on a whim”, and placed it in the context of having to add out of necessity. “Esquerra and Bildu, together we are stronger”, he said. The nationalist leader clarified that it is not a specific strategy, but that the twinning is projected “in the medium and long term”. The event, held at the ERC headquarters, served to stage a program with similar intentions. Otegi and Junqueras provided a modeled vision when assessing the Spanish political situation. They presented themselves as victims of “repression”. From his point of view, the nationalist left represents the only option to put a parapet to the advance of the extreme right in Spain. In turn, Junqueras accused the Spanish left of a lack of “democratic courage”. “Does the Spanish left have an alternative project to what the extreme right represents and to an increasingly extreme PP?” asked the ERC leader.
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