Discretion. That is Carles Puigdemont’s request to the deputies and leaders of Junts to face the coming weeks and the negotiation after the Parliamentary elections last Sunday. “We will try to negotiate with the style with which we negotiate with the Spanish Government, assuming the responsibility and gravity of the moment,” the post-convergent leader said in an appearance. “We need the work to be discreet,” he highlighted.
The former Catalan president, in a meeting held in Perpignan with the elected members of his party for the Catalan Chamber, other parliamentarians of the party as well as some members of the leadership, reiterated this Thursday his intention to be invested as president of the Generalitat with the support of Esquerra and the abstention of the PSC. The JxCat candidate has claimed the legitimacy of that option and has assured that he will exhaust the options. “We will fight to the end with the options we have,” said Puigdemont, who also pointed out his willingness to “participate in the reflection of the independence movement as a whole” to try to “repair” the relationship with ERC and other actors of the independence movement. “There are options for a government with fairly solid parliamentary support, but it must be prepared,” he stated.
In any case, for his plans to come to fruition, it is first necessary to recover the relationship with his former partner and Puigdemont has assured that he has already initiated contacts with the rest of the pro-independence groups to address future scenarios. “I have already begun to make discreet arrangements, which do not need to be revealed, but they have been done,” he stated.
In his public intervention, which preceded the closed-door meeting of the Junts leaders, he also spoke about the situation of Esquerra, which will hold a congress in November to renew the leadership and its political course and enters now, at a time decisive in defining the future of the Catalan legislature, in an interim situation. “There is an internal situation regarding who we want to be our partner, not yet clarified,” said the post-convergent leader, who wanted to express his “maximum respect” for that process.
Puigdemont has defended, as he did during the electoral campaign, that in a “scenario without a clear majority” his party has options to form a “coherent government” and has stressed that the sum of the independence movement is greater than that of the “progressive constitutionalist” forces. ”, which is how he has referred to the PSC and the commons.
Likewise, he has stressed again that an electoral repetition is not a desirable scenario, although he has warned that his formation is “prepared” for it and has demanded that his cadres not abandon the dynamic of meeting with the sectors and associations of their territory, as they have already done before the 12-M campaign. “[Repeat the elections in the fall] It is a scenario that no one wants. It would be a luxury that we cannot afford. It’s not our option and it doesn’t have to be our option. It will not be our priority,” the former president stressed. “That said, they don’t scare us. We are prepared for all eventualities,” he added later.
Puigdemont has pointed out that the scenario is now “open” since some milestones remain along the way, such as the European elections of June 9, in which the correlation of forces will be seen in Spain, in Europe as a whole and also in Catalonia. . “We will see what impacts this has on Spanish politics as a whole,” said the former Catalan president, who, in the face of criticism of his proposal to be sworn in after coming second on May 12, responded by detailing the situation of the PSOE in Congress. and other cases in which the socialists govern without being the first force, such as the Barcelona City Council.
“The PSOE lost the elections resoundingly. Let us not let ourselves be told that our attempt has no legitimacy, much less from those who claim the legitimacy of their minority governments in governments and parliaments,” Puigdemont told his people. “Pedro Sánchez has a minority government and to move things forward he has to negotiate with the opposition. It is a game that democracy allows and whoever delegitimizes that game, delegitimizes the negotiation,” he continued.
In that sense, Puigdemont already recalled this Tuesday that in the two tripartites that existed in the Generalitat in the first decade of the 2000s, led by the socialists, Convergència i Unió had clearly been the first force and yet an entente occurred. which left Artur Mas in the opposition, in a stage that the convergents baptized as the “journey through the desert” before returning to the Palau de la Generalitat. At the JxCat electoral headquarters, in Argelers, there were those who evoked that period on Sunday in case there is a tripartite of PSC, ERC and the commons. However, it was just before the scrutiny began.
