Junts faces the pre-electoral period in Catalonia with the unknown of who will be its candidate

He former president of the Generalitat, Quim Torra, served his second sentence of disqualification from holding public office on December 31 after being convicted of disobedience for refusing to remove a banner in favor of “freedom of expression” from the Palau de la Generalitat. Torra became president of the Government in May 2018 as the fourth option after Carles Puigdemont, Jordi Turull and Jordi Sánchez, all of whom were prosecuted by the process, they could not be invested. Away from the political front line and very critical of Junts' pragmatic turn, Torra has expressed several times that he has no intention of returning to the fore. Junts, in fact, faces this pre-electoral year in Catalonia with the question of who will be its head of the list for the regional elections, scheduled for February 2025.

Most opposition parties admit that it is likely that the president Pere Aragonès, who governs with a fragile minority, ends up moving the elections forward to next fall. With the certainty that Salvador Illa will once again lead the PSC, the question of who will be the candidate of other parties begins with Esquerra (ERC members eventually push for Oriol Junqueras) and ends with Junts, now mired in uncertainty. The doubt basically lies in the fact that everything will depend on the application of the amnesty law and whether it is fully in force before the elections. Junqueras is currently disqualified until 2030 and Puigdemont has several pending cases in Spain.

The question is far from being resolved but, to begin with, the board has changed radically compared to the 2012 campaign. To begin with, Junts cannot count on Laura Borràs, its last head of the list and sentenced to four and a half years in prison, 13 of disqualification and a fine of 36,000 euros for falsification of an official document and administrative prevarication. Borràs has been replaced in the position by Anna Erra, former mayor of Vic. Very close to Borràs, Torra has already made it clear that she does not plan to run for any public office and that no one offered it to her, reports Efe. Torra was sentenced in March 2022 to a second case brought against him for disobedience and to 15 months in prison for refusing to remove from the Palau de la Generalitat the banner that read “Freedom of opinion and expression. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

The key to the operation is in any case knowing what situation the amnesty law will be in and whether it has been subject to appeals or not when the list of electoral candidates has to be published. The first question is whether Carles Puigdemont will want to run again in the European elections or if he eventually rushes and bets on running in the regional elections. Not only is the decision on the rule affecting him: Jordi Turull, general secretary of the party, has 12 years of disqualification after the review by the Supreme Court following the reform of the Penal Code that repealed the crime of sedition. On the other hand, former councilor Josep Rull, however, has the disqualification sentence extinguished after the review of the sentence. The Supreme Court already filed appeals against his decision in May.

Appointed president of the National Council of Junts in 2022, Rull is one of the possible assets of Junts to lead its candidacy although he has not wanted to feed, at least in public, that possibility. The former councilor combed the territory during the municipal campaign in the same way, for example, as did Jaume Giró, former Minister of Economy, who wanted to run as a candidate for the general elections but took a step back when Puigdemont endorsed Miriam Nogueras, president of the Junts group in Congress.

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