ERC delves into the past in Ciudadanos of the PSC candidate for Tarragona

In some remote place in Catalonia there must be a drawer full of estelades. Pau Ricomà, mayor for ERC in Tarragona, assures that the right leaves it there whenever there are real estate deals involved; the Junts candidate, Jordi Sendra, assures that the Republican will keep it the day after the elections. The CUP has repeatedly accused both parties of having forgotten it in that drawer. But who surely does not keep estelades is the candidate of the PSC in Tarragona, Rubén Viñuales. Pere Aragonès has been in charge this Thursday in a campaign act to remember that the now socialist was in the ranks of Ciudadanos. “[The Socialists] have signed Spanish nationalism that came to break social cohesion.” “They have the extreme right in the party with their candidate,” said the deputy general secretary of Esquerra, Marta Vilalta.

For the head of the Government there is a peculiarity in the Tarragona PSC: “Here they have innovated and put some who shout against Catalan, against freedoms and in favor of repression, and who applaud the decoration of the policemen” who intervened on 1- EITHER. The orange past of Viñuales, in the center of the target.

The truth is that Junts may have the key to governance and may be inclined to support the Republicans as much as give the socialist candidate the stick of command. But Aragonès wanted to delve into the contradiction that it could mean for JxCat to cede, if necessary, the mayoralty to someone “who has applauded the imprisonment” of post-convergent leaders such as Jordi Turull, Quim Forn, Jordi Sànchez or Josep Rull.

The waters are troubled between ERC and JxCat. The Republican candidate assures that the post-convergents have already sealed a pact with the PSC to return the mayoralty to the Socialists. He did not obtain the denial of the mayor of Junts immediately, live, in any of the debates. But yes on Wednesday in the central act of his candidacy in Tarragona. He denied the major and also assured that he will only agree with those who “defend the country and the language” and do not “keep the estelada in a drawer.” If the latter was for ERC, Carme Forcadell was in charge of answering him this Thursday: “We are independentistas. It’s in our DNA.”

Given the doubts generated, according to the Republicans, by the position of Junts, the president of the Generalitat has called for concentrating the vote on ERC, so that “no vote for independence can go indirectly to a mayor today of the PSC and before Ciudadanos”. Aragonès wants the change to be “consolidated”. Together with Lleida, Tarragona is the other provincial capital of Catalonia whose municipal government is led by Esquerra after successive socialist governments. “We must make it very clear to those who thought they would always rule that this is not a parenthesis”, that the result of the 2019 elections “is not a stroke of bad luck”, the president cried in Tarragona.

The Republicans went from having no representation in 2011 to getting seven councilors in 2019, just enough to come second and forge a pact with Junts, En Comú Podem and the CUP that would make Pau Ricomà the first ERC mayor since the reestablishment of the democracy. The twelve years in office of the socialist Josep Fèlix Ballesteros came to an end.