The abstention in the elections on Sunday made a dent in the independence candidacies. Especially to Esquerra, for whom 300,000 people stopped voting. Now, with the generals of July 23 in sight, the Government wants all these votes to be recovered, and the possibility that the PP and Vox will be installed in Moncloa has caused Pere Aragonès to urge from Palau to form a “democratic front †or a sovereignist “common front†before a state executive of “the right and the extreme right†who, in his opinion, is singing that it will happen.
The president wants to avoid abstention, but also a leak of the “useful vote” that the PSC is in charge of claiming in the face of “the reactionary wave” that, according to independentistas and socialists, is to come if they do not stand up to it at the polls .
During his speech, Aragonès has assumed that the next government will be PP-Vox. That Ciudadanos abandon the electoral race feeds the idea. He has not allowed Pedro Sánchez to repeat as president of the Spanish Cabinet. A reasoning that is explained by the need that the president sees in concentrating the votes on the pro-independence options, which are the ones that, in his opinion, will be most effective when it comes to “defending Cataloniaâ€.
“The time is serious and Catalonia must be defended. The government of the right and extreme right is a frontal attack on the basic pillars of our countryâ€, Aragonès has come to say. And it is that for the head of the Government, the Catalan school, public health, civil rights, equality, well-being and the economy are in danger, and especially “Catalan institutions and the right to freely choose as a people”.
To understand each other, the Republican considers essential a “common front” with which, among others, the Government and the Parliament are reinforced. He has opted to replace the president of the Catalan Chamber, Laura Borrà s, convicted of prevarication and documentary falsification, with another pro-independence presidency. But he has also called for “finding new and firm governance stability mechanisms.” In other words, a pact to stabilize the Government that he leads.
However, Aragonès in no case has clarified in the morning if by “common front” or “democratic front” he means the formation of a unitary pro-independence list. That of the joint candidacy is an idea that Junts launched again on Monday, through its general secretary, Jordi Turull. “It is up to the parties to make proposals,” Aragonès has limited himself to saying.
This has opened the door for the post-convergents to attribute the proposal to themselves and affirm, as Turull has expressed from Waterloo, that “the president raises things” that they have been asking him for “for a long time and that until now he has not understood”. “If the rectification proposal to move towards independence is sincere, let’s meet tomorrow,” he stressed.
Junts has launched in a rush to make it shine that the idea is his. Carles Puigdemont has also spoken: “That is exactly what we have been asking for years: let us meet, meet again and propose a shared strategy to the country as a whole. But for independence, of course. For other things, you don’t need to waste time.” Borrà s has published a video where he affirms that he contacted Aragonès to make this “common front for independence” effective. The pre-campaign begins at full speed.
The CUP has considered it “difficult” to form this front and accused Turull and Aragonès of making proposals “at the beating of a ballot.” In addition, the anti-capitalists are pending to decide if they will appear in the elections on July 23.
However, ERC rules out that the term “democratic front” means a joint list. Marta Vilalta did it on TV3 a couple of hours before the president spoke. She accused Junts of making a proposal that was not very “serious and formal”, and that it seeks to “continue the dynamic of wear” to ERC. Party sources ratified that, despite the president’s lack of specificity, the formation does not think of a unitary list, rather of a “general framework of agreement.” Aragonès, in fact, in a speech at the Cercle d’Economia, already in the afternoon, has clarified that the joint list of two parties is not in his plans: “The democratic front is not making a list of two parties, but an alliance background”.
