The most veteran leaders of the PSC claim to have not seen a congress as “placid” as the one the party is holding this weekend, nor a first secretary as uncontested as Salvador Illa. They have to look back many years to point out a process in which the socialist family appears so “united” around the leader of the PSC, who today has been ratified as such and as a candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat.
The numbers from the vote held this Saturday at the party’s XV ordinary congress attest to this. Not a single vote against and not a single abstention. By acclamation, the party has anointed Illa, further strengthening her leadership if possible to prepare the jump to the Generalitat government. A leap that the leader wanted to begin with a presidential message, which he could well have delivered in an investiture speech.
Adapting the ‘Citizens of Catalonia, I’m here’ by Josep Tarradellas, Illa proclaimed 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 highlighted his purpose of “improving the lives of the citizens of Catalonia, wherever they live, wherever they come from.” Come, think what you think, speak the language you speak and feel what you feel.”
Thus appealing to a large majority that the PSC will need to be able to govern with as few dependencies as possible, Illa insisted on the need to recover “excellence in public services. In education, in health, in being prepared for the drought, in energy, in housing policies, in mobility infrastructure…” In short, “we are going to get to things,” he said.
And the motto of this congress, ‘Now is Catalonia’, sums up this approach, with which Illa wants Catalonia to make itself heard, “not because it shouts louder but because it will once again be an example to follow for the excellence of its public services,” he guaranteed. Acclaimed by the more than 1,200 delegates and activists attending this congress, the candidate invited everyone to help open this “new stage of hope in Catalonia”, because “the best Catalonia is yet to come”, he assured.
Illa’s electoral tone after receiving the unanimous endorsement of her party can also be felt in this PSC congress, where optimism exudes, not triumphalism, knowing that ahead they will encounter issues that will complicate the good work of the party in these elections, such as the amnesty and its possible electoral costs, the use that rivals will make of the Koldo case or the Puigdemont factor.
Even so, the management refutes each of these pitfalls. “The amnesty in Catalonia is not a problem, not here. It will not have a cost like it might have outside Catalonia”, and the Koldo case “annoys us all, the PSC of course, but also the rest because it is a factor that demobilizes the electorate,” they maintain.
Looking ahead to the elections, the PSC starts with two advantages, the same sources assure. One “that we have an orderly party” that represents “order” in Catalonia. And two, who have a “solid and reliable” candidate, to the point that he may seem “boring,” confess, because he is going to repeat the same message in the campaign, that of turning the page on the process to talk about things about eating. . “The antithesis of what Puigdemont does,” they define.
Nor do they see the former president as a destabilizing factor: “Is there a large pro-independence mobilization right now? Therefore, people have to keep in mind that even if Puigdemont returns, he will not contribute more than he did seven years ago and will have to talk about drought, education, health, Hard Rock”, something that in his opinion detracts from the halo that the former president has acquired from a distance.
