It is the last day that surveys can be published. More than half a dozen were known this Monday and Pere Aragonès has downplayed all of them. The head of the Government and national coordinator of ERC has also avoided commenting on whether he would agree with Salvador Illa, PSC candidate, and form a new tripartite together with the commons. Aragonès is going full gear with his intention of trying to mark the campaign with proposals. Likewise, with the idea that he only contemplates the possibility of revalidating the presidency of the Generalitat, despite the fact that almost all the polls place Esquerra third. “I am the only candidate who is saying what he will do if he is re-elected president,” he stated, something he has argued is because the leader of the Socialists is “disoriented” and Carles Puigdemont “is afraid” of confronting projects.
Illa is disoriented, according to Aragonès. He proves it, he said during a press conference organized by Efe, that these days he has said “that he wants to speak alone, that he wants a government with the support of other left-wing parties, or that he wants to reach an understanding with Junts.” . “When you talk about chairs you end up trying to play that game of where the ball is, with whom you try to make agreements,” he justified.
At all times Aragonès has avoided speaking out about an alliance with the PSC and the commons. To do so, he uses the formula “I am running to win the elections.” It is from this eventuality, that of him being the one who opts for the presidency, when he then concedes that he is open to agreeing with any force that assumes his three conditions: laying the foundations for a self-determination referendum, singular financing and reinforcing the welfare state and the Catalan language. That would include the socialists.
The ERC candidate reproaches Puigdemont for not wanting to confront projects, or in other words, for not being willing to debate face to face. The truth is that Junts began the electoral period by attacking those of Oriol Junqueras, but as the days have progressed and as they have seen the possibility of challenging the PSC for first place, the former president has tended to ignore Esquerra in his attacks.
In any case, unlike Junts, Aragonès prefers to downplay the importance of the polls. “In the last general elections, according to the polls, Feijóo would be president today (…) The vote is in charge and not the polls,” he reasoned.
That ERC ends up agreeing with Junts is one of the scenarios, whoever is ahead of the other. But so is the blockade and, therefore, that of the electoral repetition. It will largely depend on the independence sum, from which today the president of the Generalitat has excluded the Islamophobic group Aliança Catalana, led by Sílvia Orriols.
“The extreme right is extreme right regardless of the flag” it defends, Aragonès has assured. The Republican considers that the Orriols party does not work for social cohesion in Catalonia. “You cannot work to achieve an independent country if you exclude an important part of the population,” he said, which is why “I do not count Aliança Catalana as an independence party.”
