Yesterday, Carles Puigdemont called the PSC’s first secretary and candidate, Salvador Illa, “irresponsible” for, in his opinion, giving support to the extra-parliamentary and far-right Catalan Alliance, headed by the mayoress of Ripoll, Sílvia orioles “Illa has spoken a lot about an extra-parliamentary group. It makes me think a lot about whether their commitment [against the extreme right] is real”, said the former president, who reproached the socialists for making an agreement with the PP in the Barcelona City Council to deprive Xavier Trias of the mayor’s office of the Catalan capital. He linked one thing and the other when he remarked that Vox is the partner of the people in many administrations and spoke of “hypocrisy”.
The post-convergent leader launched a similar rebuke to Esquerra before the start of the electoral campaign and yesterday he used the French experience to reprimand the PSC for talking about Orriols.
So, he compared what is happening in this campaign with what happened in France when – he explained – François Mitterrand gave wings and focus to the National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen, then an extra-parliamentary force, with the aim to weaken Jacques Chirac’s Gaullist right. “The extreme right will win the European elections in France, it leads the Perpignan City Council and the French Socialist Party, I won’t say that it has almost disappeared, but it is irrelevant”, emphasized Puigdemont, who in his speech clearly disassociated immigration from multi-recidivist crime and pointed out that this “is a judicial and not a police problem” that he already had to deal with when he was mayor of Girona.
The pro-independence leader pointed out that repeat offenders tend to be few, despite the fact that they cause a lot of problems, and related this matter to poverty, social exclusion and school dropout, because, as he pointed out, these are young people . “Let’s not mix two debates that have nothing to do with each other. There are those who want to relate them. But it’s a lie, they have nothing to do. Crime has to do with poverty, with social exclusion and with the failure of reintegration in some cases”, argued the former president, who wanted to focus on other types of crime, such as cyber crimes or drug trafficking.
Puigdemont made these references when he addressed the “demographic challenge” posed by a Catalonia with an aging population, low birth rate and immigration, an issue that – he warned – must be approached with a “State vision” and thinking about what “Catalonia” will be like of the future” to be able to provide public services and guarantee the welfare state.
To deal with it, he promised to put this issue at the center of political action in all departments of the executive if he is president and promised guarantees to young people for the entry of the mortgage and so that they can emancipate as well as birth allowances, among other measures.
In another order of things, Puigdemont assured yesterday that “it is within reach” that Junts will be the first force in the Parliament on May 12 and warned the undecided that the result can be “by a few votes “.
