From declaring during her inauguration as President of the Parliament in March 2021 that she will be “relentless against machismo and xenophobia”, that “fascism is incompatible with democracy” and that it cannot be “normalized”, to Laura Borrà s opposing to a pact to prevent the xenophobic, Islamophobic and far-right party Aliança Catalana from ruling in Ripoll.The president of Junts is no longer in Parliament, but she continues to give people something to talk about and compromises her formation.
“I am not in favor [of a pact to prevent the Aliança Catalana from governing]. I think that if I defend that contradicting the popular will when it harms us is not correct; doing it when it favors us is not correct either.” This is how Borrà s replied this Sunday at noon to a tweet by SÃlvia Orriols, leader of the far-right party leader of the far-right party that won the elections in Ripoll on May 28. Orriols denounced a possible agreement between Junts, Esquerra, the CUP and the PSC to take over the mayor’s office. “Thank you, Laura, for respecting the popular will,” the far-right pro-independence leader applauded in another tweet.
After all kinds of criticism followed one another on the networks, including from the ERC and the CUP, Borrà s qualified his words four hours later, although they do not imply a rectification. Thus, the president of JxCat -who was in Waterloo this Sunday with Jordi Turull and the new president of the Catalan Chamber, Anna Erra, to meet Carles Puigdemont- has assured that she leaves the decision in the hands of the local party cadres , but it does not seem like a bad idea to “let the extreme right govern for a while” so that, according to what he maintains, people see “their true face” and “whether or not they know how to govern”, and then “throw them out without turning them into victims”.
On the part of Junts there have been no reactions. Only the president of the national education council, Josep Rull, has reacted directly to the speech full of “prejudice, ignorance and bad faith” against Orriols’ Islam. Of course, without any reference to the words of Borrà s.
Those who have referred to the president of Junts have been ERC, the CUP and the commons. Marta Vilalta, deputy general secretary of the Republicans, has described Borrà s’s statements as “very serious” and has considered that the independence movement “is a movement that guarantees rights and freedoms and social cohesion”. “Under a supposed democratic discourse, the exclusionary, racist and classist discourse of the Catalan extreme right is endorsed and accepted”, underlined Eulà lia Reguant, deputy for the CUP, while the spokesperson for the commons, David Cid, has assured that “voting Junts is to vote for a government of PP and Vox” in the general elections on July 23.
