In Junts’ election campaign there is a clear target every day, and sometimes two. They are the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, who held his first rally in Catalonia today, and the first secretary and candidate of the PSC, Salvador Illa. If in the past days Carles Puigdemont referred to the leader of the Catalan socialists as the “delegate of the central government” and ironically suppressed that figure his Illa is the next president of the Generalitat, today, in a rally in Algiers with sympathizers of the counties of Osona, Moianès and Lluçanès, the leader of Junts has referred to his opponent as “civil governor”.
Regarding Sánchez’s emergence into the campaign, who had an appetizer this Wednesday with a visit to the April Fair and today was in Sant Boi de Llobregat, Puigdemont has indicated that it is “a change of candidate”, Sánchez for Illa, and a “155 of low intensity”, for “trying to govern Catalonia from the Moncloa”, as Mariano Rajoy did in 2017 with the application of that article of the Constitution that allows self-government to intervene and with which he dissolved the Parliament.
Once again, Puigdemont has tried to polarize the Catalan battle between the socialists’ project and his own. “We know that it is a matter of two, Illa as civil governor of the Catalan province or us leading the Catalan reactivation,” stated the former Catalan president. “There is no other option,” he added just afterwards, on the same day that he demanded that his former partners in the Government of the Generalitat, Esquerra Republicana, guarantee that they will not invest Illa after the May 12 elections. .
In his speech today, Puigdemont has made many references to management and has advocated for a “refoundation of Catalonia” and profound changes in the administration to reduce bureaucracy as well as the assumption of more powers by the Catalan administration. Thus, he has advocated “to anticipate and modernize the country.” “Catalanism has done it all its life, even the one that had no powers, the Mancomunitat did it,” he stated.
The former president has also advocated for Catalonia to “rearm itself as a country” and has defined the current moment as “critical” and a “colossal national emergency.” In that sense, he added that it is also necessary that there be “material rearmament.” “We need resources, economic and also legal. And skills,” he said. “We need them to delegate powers to us, we have to take them out of their hands,” he concluded, and immediately afterwards assured that “if they do not fix non-compliance with Catalonia” the JxCat group in the Congress of Deputies will vote against the general budgets of the State.
“We have asked for the delegation of powers in immigration matters. Some say all in, others all out. We want a Catalan policy, education, integration, that talks about rights and duties, that integrates newcomers into the collective effort, as we have always done. We did very well in the past and we have to do very well in the future. We want to manage it ourselves”, he pointed out in relation to the claim for powers in immigration matters.
In another vein, Puigdemont has advocated that the next Catalan executive dedicate himself to “leading, making decisions and not being afraid of the banner.” In that sense, he has assured that the expansion of the El Prat airport is paralyzed by “the electoral interests of the PSC in the territory.”
“To solve the problems at the Barcelona airport we do not have to be afraid of the PSC voters in the territory,” he said, referring to the residents of Gavà. “That’s what’s running the airport aground,” he concluded.
In the previous days, Puigdemont has accused the socialists of wanting to turn the Barcelona airport into the “fifth runway of Barajas.”
