The result of the May 12 elections has turned the Catalan political board upside down and has knocked down pieces that had been controlling the game for years. The collapse of the leadership of Esquerra Republicana, a goodbye without turning back for Pere Aragonès and Marta Rovira, and a probable see you later in the case of Oriol Junqueras, beheads the leadership of a formation that has spent the last decade exercising power in the Generalitat, either alone or together with its convenient partners from Junts, previously identified under the acronym PDeCAT. In the week of the start of negotiations to put together a Government and avoid an electoral repetition, the turbulence in Esquerra has projected a shock wave on its main rivals. Junts and Carles Puigdemont use it to claim themselves as the only solid option that resists in the independence movement and Salvador Illa takes advantage of the climate of fratricidal division to give agility to his investiture.
Finding similarities between Salvador Illa and Carles Puigdemont is not a simple exercise. Their political differences are known, as are their personal differences. He does not agree with them nor does Barça, an entity with twinning power in Catalonia. Illa is from Espanyol and Puigdemont prefers Girona. The first is an inveterate runner, one of those who jog daily at dawn, and the former president He recognizes that he only practices sport as a spectator. Suddenly, the race to become president of the Generalitat has brought to light a coincidence: the two are trying to flatter Esquerra Republicana. Illa won the elections with 42 seats and Puigdemont came second with 35. The majority in the Parliament is set at 68 and ERC, with 20 deputies, is called upon to play the role of referee.
The PSC leader has stated that he gives ERC “all the time it needs to reflect,” and has highlighted the “relevant role” of Esquerra in Catalan politics. Junts and ERC have a chronically bad relationship, which worsened when in October 2022 the former decided to abandon the coalition Government in the Generalitat. Puigdemont was one of the instigators of the breakup. The former Catalan president, who left for Belgium in 2017 to avoid being tried and is pending the amnesty law to avoid the risk of being arrested if he enters Spain, appeared on Thursday from Perpignan (France) to send a message to ERC and show the “maximum respect for the internal processes they may have.” Patience, but the hooks are set.
The starting point is uneven, because Illa secures the presidency if he convinces ERC, in addition to adding the foreseeable support of the Commons, while Puigdemont needs a more daring contortion: to be invested he would need to gather the support of Esquerra and the CUP, and get the PSC to abstain. The Junts candidate sees the operation as “coherent” and appeals to the role that his deputies can play in Congress to convince Pedro Sánchez of the interest that interceding in Catalonia represents for the stability of his Government. “Reality is reality: they don’t give you the numbers,” Sánchez concluded this Friday in an interview in the sixth.
The nationalist parties had been chaining majorities in the Parliament for three decades and the end of the cycle has had consequences. Illa tries to take advantage of the new context to seek links with Esquerra. A tripartite government (PSC, ERC and commons) is rejected out of hand, but it is not ruled out that the socialists could mediate for ERC to occupy some prominent position, such as the presidency of the Parliament. If the courtship bears fruit, it will mean the political cornering of Junts and the bankruptcy of the independence bloc, a side where JxCat and ERC are active (with more reservations also the CUP) and that has multiple internal disagreements, but that appeals to separatist slogans to reject pacts with the PSC.
Esquerra has stated that its only intention is to go to the opposition. The poor result of 12-M has ruined the power accumulated since 2015, when the party decided to participate in the Junts pel Sí operation to accelerate the processes from the engine room of the Generalitat. He president Pere Aragonès and Marta Rovira, general secretary of the party, have announced that they are leaving because they consider themselves responsible for the damage. Oriol Junqueras has chosen to take some time for reflection. Those around him state that he does not feel directly responsible for the electoral setback, because he had not actively participated in the Government’s decision-making. In last year’s municipal elections, Esquerra lost 300,000 votes, compared to the result four years earlier. In the Congressional elections of June 23, the Republicans lost 400,000 votes.
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Puigdemont announced during the campaign that failing to win the presidency of the Generalitat would mean the end of his political career. The still MEP tries to take advantage of the weakness of ERC to appeal to an alleged unity of the independence movement. He has said that these are times of “national emergency” and that the priority is “not to waste time with internal divisions.” His strategy brings him several returns. Convincing Esquerra that it is advisable to support his investiture does not assure him of becoming president because the PSC would lack abstention, but it does make the task of finding partners more difficult for Illa. If the mess ends in a blockade and forces a repeat election in the fall, Puigdemont could campaign in person in Spain because then, supposedly, the amnesty law will already be in force. He himself has said that a repeat election is not desirable, but that he is prepared for whatever comes: “We are not afraid,” he has warned.
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