Nobody expected the race to take the reins of Esquerra Republicana (ERC) to be placid, but this Saturday it became clear that it will be fratricidal, bitter and merciless. Oriol Junqueras presented his candidacy, Militància Decidim, at an event in Olesa de Montserrat (Barcelona) and there he worked hard to amend the management of the general secretary Marta Rovira, with whom he had formed a tandem in the direction of the party for the last 13 years. Without mentioning her, he has left her management in tatters, he has blamed her for not sufficiently claiming the referendum of 1-O and he has linked her to the B structure of the party responsible for campaigns such as the one of the posters against the Maragall brothers. Junqueras has opted to lift the party, but he has issued a warning: “Let us not sew any wounds that we have not first cleaned.”
Junqueras has also made a splash by announcing the leader of the Barcelona City Council, Elisenda Alamany, as a candidate to occupy the post of general secretary. The show of strength by the former leader of ERC, who left the post last June, makes it clear that he will not have too many difficulties in continuing to lead the second stage of the race to reconquer the presidency of ERC. Although he has not filled the 1,499 seats of the Olesa de Montserrat theatre, it has been demonstrated that Junqueras still maintains his appeal within a large sector of the membership.
Throughout the various interventions, messages such as “restore honesty”, “coherence” and “rebuild trust” were repeated, clear attacks against the interim leadership headed by Rovira. “We have not known how to manage our contradictions. We have become too institutionalized, the decision-making spaces are in dark and private places,” added the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bernat Solé. “Oriol Junqueras is a comrade in struggle and comrades in struggle are not turned away, they are supported,” said the former Minister Raül Romeva, in a speech that brought the audience to its feet shouting “Oriol, president”.
But it was the former vice president of the Generalitat, sentenced to prison terms for the process and later pardoned by the Government of Pedro Sánchez, who has kept his harshest words to himself against a leadership that he presided over until last June, when internal pressure due to the poor results of the last electoral cycle – and which he wanted to disassociate himself from – led him to agree to a delayed exit. His candidacy, Junqueras said, aims to “rescue the party to put it at the service of the country.”
“I sincerely apologize for those who in the 21-D campaign [2017] couldn’t get the job [de hacer posible el referéndum del 1-O] “I was vindicated as I deserved,” he said in another attack on the party leadership. Junqueras was then in provisional prison and Rovira took charge of the campaign and later the reins of the party, until he fled to Switzerland. The candidate to repeat as head of ERC has also hinted that the general secretary and her team were aware of the posters laughing at his time in prison or Pasqual Maragall’s Alzheimer’s disease, using the image of his brother Ernest, candidate in 2019 for the mayor of Barcelona in 2019. “I apologize for having a group that had the objective of making decisions outside the party and outside its executive. It is a shame that we do not deserve.”
Junqueras has dramatized to the maximum his memorial of grievances against what was his number two and those around him. “I know you are indignant. Indignation is a legitimate feeling. But it is essential that we transform it into a driving force for change and transformation, a fire that renews everything.” And he added: “Let us not sew up any wounds that we have not first healed.”
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At other points in his speech, the former president The Republican left party has launched a presidential-style speech, with the classic history lesson that he usually includes in his speeches. Junqueras has avoided any allusion to the future of governability in Spain or to the relationship with Salvador Illa’s government in the Generalitat. The Republican is waiting to find out whether the amnesty law applies to the penalty of disqualification from holding public office to which he was also sentenced and has not hidden his desire to aspire to be head of the government.
Junqueras’s move forward is the starting signal for a process that officially begins in two weeks, when ERC opens the congress process, which will last until next February. The Republicans operate under an assembly structure and all the militants participate in the congress, there are no delegates. Once the new leadership is elected on November 30, the debate on the political and organizational proposals will begin.
On October 15, the lists that want to take the step to fight for the leadership – so far four have made a public presentation – will have to register. Afterwards, they will have a month to obtain the endorsements. The regulations establish that they must exceed the equivalent of 5% of the total membership. The latest available data, that of the consultation on the investiture agreement of Salvador Illa as president Catalan, was 8,200 members, which would put the threshold at over 400 supporters.
Among those attending were, among others, the deputy in Madrid Gabriel Rufian and the president of the Port of Barcelona, Lluís Salvadó. There were several mayors and councillors from all over Catalonia, but only two important names from the previous Executive: the former Minister of the Interior Joan Ignasi Elena and the former number two from the Department of Territory, Joan Jaume Oms.
Militància Decidim has thus put itself at the head of a race in which the main competitor is the Nova Esquerra Nacional list, the umbrella under which those related to Rovira and the former president Pere Aragonès, and who propose a change of faces in the leadership. Their candidate for the presidency of the party is the sociologist and former senior official of the Generalitat Xavier Godàs. Foc Nou (with the former minister Alfred Bosch) and Recuperem BCN (with the lawyer Xavier Martínez) complete the lists in contention to take the reins of the party.
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