Good government, national ambition and “preparing Catalonia for the future”. With the figure of Carles Puigdemont – who promises to be present at the first investiture debate no matter what – as the main claim and without screens in the middle, Junts has proposed the campaign without stridency and with a purposeful tone, with the commitment to lower taxes, to carry out a deep reform in the Administration to reduce bureaucracy and to demand an economic concert so that Catalonia collects 100% of the taxes. Program and proposals to counter the attacks of rivals who qualify their personalist project.
From start to finish, all the post-convergent artillery has been focused on the PSC of Salvador Illa, which has an advantage in the polls. On the other hand, Puigdemont has dosed and limited the reproaches to Esquerra Republicana, with which he intends to agree again after the 12-M. In any case, JxCat is confident that tomorrow’s date with the ballot boxes will resolve the “technical tie” that exists since 2017 between the two sovereign formations, a scenario that, in their opinion, will clarify the picture and facilitate understanding, since – they argue – “one strategy will not neutralize the other”.
The initial idea of ??JxCat was to polarize the battle between its leader and the socialists, and the starting shot, marked by the five-day reflection period of the president of the central government, Pedro Sánchez, gave the formation ammunition for this and to emphasize that tomorrow’s elections “go from the future of Catalonia”. The polls have reinforced this scheme and Puigdemont insists that he is the only pro-independence candidate who can win the PSC, which is why he is asking to concentrate the pro-sovereign vote in his candidacy and with this wedge he appeals to the undecided. “Let the vote not be dispersed,” Puigdemont asked yesterday from Cotlliure in a statement in the morning in which he asked to also send an unequivocal message to Europe.
So, in the final stretch, Junts has avoided unforced errors and claims that if there is a massive mobilization tomorrow and they manage to activate the abstentionists who in the previous electoral cycle diminished the results of independence they can have the first group parliamentary
In fact, parallels have been drawn with what happened in 1980, when polls predicted the victory of the socialist Joan Reventós and in the end Jordi Pujol won, who 24 hours before the official start of the contest expressed his support for Puigdemont in an event in Martorell and yesterday he did it again. A gesture to which the leader of JxCat responded – other candidates have also done it – a few days later, when he vindicated his legacy without blunts and what Convergència per Catalunya did after the Franco regime. In fact, one of JxCat’s slogans resembles that of Pujol in his first elections: “Raise Catalonia”.
At the end of the campaign, Junts filled the grounds of the old Elna schools yesterday, the same one where they presented their candidacies at the beginning of April. It is an event that was not initially planned, since the colophon to the electoral race was supposed to be in Barcelona, ??at the Jardinets de Gràcia, with a last telematic intervention by the former Catalan president in a symbolic way.
Nevertheless, the response of the party’s supporters, who have filled the Jean Carrère venue in Argelers almost every day, motivated the change of plans to show muscle and try to mobilize the cadres and turn the polls upside down. “Gentlemen of Madrid, get ready, we’re coming”, Puigdemont exclaimed yesterday, evoking his “restitution” as president of the Generalitat after being dismissed in October 2017 with article 155 of the Constitution
