The most veteran leaders of the PSC say that they had never experienced a congress “as placid” as the one the party is celebrating this weekend, nor a first secretary as uncontested as Salvador Illa. They have to look back many years to point out an internal process in which the socialist family is so “united” around the leader of the PSC, who yesterday was ratified as such and as an aspirant for the presidency of the Generalitat.
The numbers of the vote held at the XV ordinary congress of the party attest to this. Not a single vote against and not a single abstention. By acclamation, the party anointed Illa and further strengthened its leadership to prepare the jump to the Government of Generalitat. A leap that Illa wanted to make yesterday with a presidentialist message, which could well be part of his eventual inauguration speech.
Illa adapted Josep Tarradellas’ “Citizens of Catalonia, I’m here” to proclaim his commitment to open “a new stage in Catalonia for political normalization”. A stage in which his priority, if he manages to reach the Generalitat, will be to govern “for everyone”.
“Citizens of Catalonia, I want to express my commitment that the most important thing will be to recover the public service”, expressed the already socialist candidate, who emphasized his purpose to “improve the lives of the citizens of Catalonia, wherever they live, come from where they come, think what they think, speak whatever language they speak and feel what they feel”.
Evoking a large majority that the PSC will need to manage to govern with as few dependencies as possible, Illa questioned even pro-independence and right-wing voters and insisted on the need to recover “excellence in public services , in education, in health, to be prepared for drought, in energy, in housing policies, in mobility infrastructures…”. Ultimately, “we will focus on things”, he promised.
And the motto of this congress, “Now it’s Catalonia’s turn”, sums up this approach, through which Salvador wants Catalonia to be heard “not so that it shouts more, but so that it can once again be an example to be followed by excel lence of its public services”.
Acclaimed by the more than 1,200 delegates and activists attending this congress, the candidate invited them all to help usher in this “new stage of hope in Catalonia”, because “the best Catalonia is yet to come”, he assured.
The electoral tone of the leader of the PSC after receiving the unanimous endorsement of the party is also breathed in this congress. Among those present there is optimism, not triumphalism, knowing that in the future they will encounter issues that will complicate the party’s path in these elections, such as the amnesty and its possible electoral costs, the use that the rivals will make of the Koldo case or the Puigdemont factor.
“You still have to win well”, and then, see who prevails on the pro-independence side, warns a prominent member of the new PSC executive. Even so, the management refutes each of the dilemmas presented. “Amnesty, in Catalonia, is not a problem; not here. It will not have a cost like what it can have outside Catalonia”, they predict. And the Koldo case “harms us all, the PSC of course, but also the rest because it is a factor that demobilizes the electorate”, they say.
In the run-up to the elections, the PSC starts with “two advantages”, the same sources point out. One, that “we have an orderly party” and that it represents “order” in Catalonia. And two, that we have a “solid, reliable and predictable” candidate, to the point of seeming “boring”, they confess, because he will repeat the same message in the campaign, that of turning a page in the process to “talk about the food stuff”. “The antithesis of what Puigdemont is doing”, they distinguish.
Nor do they see the former president as a destabilizing factor: “Is there a big pro-independence mobilization right now?” The obvious negative response to the rhetorical question leads them to conclude that even if Puigdemont returns “he will not contribute more than he did seven years ago”, and also, “he will have to talk about drought, education, healthcare, Hard Rock… .”, which in his opinion detracts from the halo that has surrounded the former president in the distance.
The Catalan socialists have not only prepared the team with which they will face the crucial elections on 12-M, but also the ideas. In their new road map, they defend a “stable” coexistence framework based on dialogue, and point out that unilateralism has been “a conflictual, non-democratic path and the result of an artificial magical enchantment, as populisms tend to be”. They are also eagerly defending a social democratic response to the citizens’ problems, an issue which will be discussed in depth by the president of the central government, Pedro Sánchez, who is closing this congress with Illa today.
