Carles Puigdemont stated on October 25, 2017 that he did not want to be the president of Freedonia. The former president of the Generalitat turned to the imaginary republic of Goose soup, the comic film of the Marx brothers, to justify that it would advance regional elections instead of declaring the independence of Catalonia. There was nothing prepared to materialize the separation from Spain, he admitted in a tense meeting in which he announced his decision to the members of his Executive and the representatives of the entities that mobilized the bases of Catalan nationalism. The president he finally changed his mind and Parliament declared frustrated unilateral independence on 27 October.
Four years later, Puigdemont resides in Belgium – where he fled to avoid being tried – and presides over what he calls the “legitimate Government” of Catalonia, embodied in the Consell per la República, a private entity without any public institutional responsibility that voted for this purpose. of the week to the members of its Assembly of Representatives.
“I don’t want to be the virtual president of a virtual country. I refuse to go around the world handing out cards from a non-existent republic ”. This was Puigdemont’s explanation on the eve of the declaration of independence, according to several witnesses to that meeting, such as the former Minister of Culture Santi Vila. The Consell was established in 2018 and is presented as the authentic representation of the sovereignty of Catalonia after the central Government ceased the Puigdemont Executive in October 2017 and the Generalitat intervened based on article 155 of the Constitution. The headquarters of the Consell is the House of the Republic, the house in Waterloo, Belgium, where Puigdemont resides. The Consell informs that it is financed from the fees of its more than 100,000 members, from private donations, especially nationalist associations and senior officials from Junts.
22,584 people, 26% of the census made up of its members, voted online between Friday and Sunday for the representatives who will occupy the 121 seats in its Assembly, its parliament. 81 of these deputies will be ordinary citizens and 40 will be elected officials. 525 candidates were presented, of which 72 are politicians who hold public office. Of the politicians who have run for representatives in this assembly, 75% are members of Junts per Catalunya, Puigdemont’s party, and only 5% – four candidates – are from Esquerra Republicana (ERC). The rest are, above all, independent councilors and local parties, although there are also those from the CUP.
A large part of the citizens who presented themselves for a seat in the Assembly are related to Puigdemont, according to what could be read in their presentation writings; This was the case of the first name that appeared on the lists of candidates, that of Abigail Monells, manager of the cultural center of Barcelona Espai Mallorca: “I am from Junts per Catalunya because there is no other remedy. CDR always! ”. Monells was a candidate in the electoral district of Vallès Occidental, like Montserrat Trullàs, councilor for Junts “in a difficult city, Terrassa,” she stated, without specifying why Terrassa is difficult. “I want to work from the Council for the Republic because it is the embryo of the future State of the Catalans”, “added Monells,” the way of being in the world of this country with a thousand years of history and a thousand more years of future ahead ” .
The Assembly will elect the president of the Consell in mid-November and the latter, in turn, will appoint “the members of his Government”. The presidency is already held by Puigdemont and it is unlikely that another person will appear to relieve him. Last Tuesday a debate was held in Barcelona between candidates from the Ciutat Vella district for the Consell’s parliament. The audience was made up of a hundred people, practically all of them over the retirement age, as recognized by one of the candidates, Salvador Mangado: “There is a lack of young people here. One of the challenges of the Assembly is to attract young people ”. The 14 candidates who participated in the debate assured that, if elected, they will vote in favor of Puigdemont being sworn in as president. “He is the legitimate president and he must be the president of this digital nation,” reasoned candidate Antoni Rodríguez.
The Consell for the Republic was the main obstacle in the negotiations to form the coalition between ERC and Junts that led Pere Aragonès to the presidency of the Generalitat. Junts demanded that the Generalitat’s strategy to achieve self-determination, as well as the negotiations with the central government at the dialogue table, be agreed with the Consell per la República. This demand was considered by ERC as an attempt to protect the presidency of Aragonès. Finally, an agreement was reached by which the Consell should be reformulated to be “a space for coordination, consensus and strategic direction of the independence movement.”
Criticism of ERC
Despite the pact, distrust prevails between the leadership of the Consell and ERC. Puigdemont wrote on Twitter last week, in a veiled reference to the moderate strategy and contrary to the unilateralism of ERC: “Four years ago we declared the independence of Catalonia in Parliament. We have been defending it for four years from those who would want to erase it ”. Puigdemont’s supporters are belligerent with ERC. Speaking of the president of this formation, Oriol Junqueras, the candidate Rodríguez affirmed in the debate that his time in prison ruled him out as a good leader: “As Sun Tzu said, do not follow a general who has been captured by the enemy.” Among the candidates, Pep Centelles, a member of the Junqueras party, took the floor and asked that the Consell not become “a group of friends who are dedicated to calling botiflers [traidores] to those of ERC ”.
One of the highlights of the electoral act of Ciutat Vella was the analysis of the document “Preparémonos”, a report prepared by the Consell in which the main lines of what should be its function are established: preparing the independence movement for when it has to return to prove unilateral independence. “The street cannot be tied to the performance of the Govern and to the Catalan institutions, subject to a centralized autonomous architecture ”, reads the document. Some of the proposals suggested in this regard by the candidates ranged from “taking control of the territory” to replacing the commanders of the Mossos d’Esquadra, the autonomous police. “We have to know what soldiers we have in this war,” said Rosa Maria Figueras. These will be the decisions that will be debated from November by the parallel parliament of Catalan nationalism.
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