Puigdemont despises Aragonès and presents himself as the only real defender of independence

There, just 30 kilometers from Spanish territory, which he still does not dare to set foot in while awaiting the entry into force of Pedro Sánchez's promised amnesty, the still fugitive made it clear that Junt views the parliamentary elections on May 12 as a contest exclusively between Puigdemont himself and the socialist Salvador Illa. And that in this fight for the Generalitat the third party in contention, the current Catalan president Pere Aragonès, has nothing to do, as the polls seem to indicate, because his Government “has lost its way.”

“He is confused and is incapable of facing the transformations, some of which are very urgent, that the country needs,” Puigdemont insisted before his people, while accusing Aragonès of being “incapable of rebuilding the political and social majority that the polls required to complete the independence”. In that scenario – he argued – only JxCat is a real “alternative” to achieve the Catalan Republic.

In his first rally as a candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat, Puigdemont made an effort to highlight the work of Junts in recent months to obtain the approval of an amnesty law broader than the one that the PSOE agreed with ERC and that was rejected by the post-convergents in a first vote. The alleged docility of the Republicans in the processing of the criminal erasure law was just one of the many attacks that the former head of the regional Executive dedicated to the leaders of the Esquerra Republicana de Catalaunya, whom he disfigured, among many other issues, for having led a Government that “does not comply with the agreements” and that basically forced the departure of Junts due to the continuous “rejection of its proposals.”

“Without decisions that are difficult to explain (such as abandoning the Aragonès Government at the time), today we could not be here and propose this new impulse that puts us where we want to be,” stressed the former president, who thanked the party for its generosity in accepting the incorporation into the lists of names from different political traditions and sectors.

Faced with an ERC that the fugitive independence leader described as a lack of ideas and that has to resort to “media candidates” and the “easy resource” of “taking familiar faces” such as TV3's weatherman Tomás Molina for the European elections, Carles Puigdemont contrasted a Junts with a list “designed for the day after the elections.” «We are not interested in power for power's sake. We are interested in the power to transform and to take advantage of opportunities and reinvigorate the country when there are so many things to transform and promote,” said the candidate.

“No means no”

In his first major rally in Catalunya Nord, the fled former president wanted to show Junts above all as a party with much more capacity to oppose Sánchez's Government than ERC and with more will to impose its agenda on Madrid than the Republicans have. Puigdemont once again brought up his party's first 'no' to the amnesty law to ensure that “the Government (of Sánchez) is the one that has understood best” that “when Junts says no it means no.”

«It was thought that we were bluffing. We are not going to make friends or look for new allies, we are going to serve Catalonia and if to serve we have to say enough is enough, we say it,” said the Junts leader. “None of the other candidates are in a position to offer that and to stand before the Government,” the former president concluded.