During his time as mayor of Girona, Carles Puigdemont had to deal with criticism from the opposition, which accused him of being the top leader of a city in which he did not live. Puigdemont’s family home is in a residential area in Sant Julià de Ramis, about ten kilometres from Girona. Now, the former president of the Generalitat commands the main opposition force in Catalonia from his home in Waterloo (Belgium), 1,300 kilometres from Barcelona. The judicial obstacles to the application of the amnesty law block the return to Catalonia of the former president and his lawyer has filed a complaint with the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) accusing Judge Pablo Llarena of deliberately delaying tactics.
But beyond his legal situation, Puigdemont has not clarified what his new political role is and what function he plans to play in the Parliament. The lack of definition of the Junts leader questions the value of his public commitment to abandon “active politics” if he does not manage to be reinstated. presidentwhile raising doubts about the unity of action of the Junts group in the chamber and conditioning the opposition work that the party can do against the Government of Salvador Illa.
Among the pending tasks that Josep Rull will have to face upon his return from vacation is the appointment of the head of the opposition in Catalonia. The regulations of the Parliament state that it is the responsibility of the president of the chamber to issue a resolution to appoint “the deputy who presides over the parliamentary opposition group with the most seats”. In 2021, Salvador Illa was appointed as such four days after Pere Aragonès took office.
This time, Illa became president of the Generalitat on August 10. The PSC candidate won the Catalan elections on May 12, with seven more seats than the JxCat list. However, Puigdemont already warned during the electoral campaign that the only horizon he contemplated was that of his reinstatement as president. president: “It makes no sense to come here to act as the leader of the opposition,” he said. On August 8, he burst into Barcelona to give a brief speech but then managed to evade the police operation that the Mossos d’Esquadra had set up to arrest him and escaped to Belgium. Jordi Turull, secretary general of Junts, has said that there is “unanimity” in the party when it comes to defending that the action of the former president it was a success.
Puigdemont has tried to confer a maximum institutional rank to his status as former president and even those around him have tried to procure him the distinction of “legitimate president”, under the idea that in 2017 he was a victim of the application of article 155 of the Constitution and that he was removed from the Generalitat in an illegitimate manner. Subordinated to his own doctrine, Puigdemont has closed doors to finding a way out within the new Catalan political context and his personal uncertainty conditions the decision-making in JxCat and hampers the ability of his party to intervene in the Parliament. In the premises occupied by Junts in the autonomous chamber there is an empty office, supposedly reserved for Puigdemont.
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Following the PSC’s pact with ERC and the Comuns for Illa’s investiture, Junts is claiming to be the alternative “to the unionist tripartite”, but without Puigdemont at the helm the party is looking for referents. It was a personal gamble by the candidate himself to put Anna Navarro as number 2 on his list, a technology entrepreneur with no experience in politics and who has spent the last thirty years living in the United States. Navarro barely had any prominence in the campaign and her lack of experience penalises her for being the party’s voice in Parliament.
In mid-June, and when Illa still had not secured the support to be head of Government, Junts issued a statement announcing that the parliamentary group had decided to “endorse a proposal from the president Puigdemont” to give continuity to Albert Batet and Mònica Sales at the head of the Junts team in the Parliament. The statement clarified that the appointment of the captains was temporary, “until there is a factor that resolves the legislature”. The pact between PSC and ERC acted as that unblocking element and Illa is already acting as president without it being clear in JxCat what role the party leader will play and what the roadmap will be for acting as opposition to the PSC.
While waiting for Puigdemont to clarify what plans he has, Junts will try to resolve some unknowns at the political congress that it has brought forward to the end of October, two years earlier than planned. But there are still ten weeks to go until the meeting and, in the meantime, the party has to deal with its role as a counterweight to Illa in the Parliament and with a lack of influence in Catalonia, where it only controls the Girona Provincial Council and some medium-sized town councils. The Junts leadership has announced that it will also leave it for the October congress to decide what relationship the party will have from now on with the Government. “We are not currently concerned with whether Pedro Sánchez’s Government will suffer or not,” Turull recently tried to conclude.
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