For Esquerra, the persecution denounced by Pedro Sánchez is not at all comparable to “exile” that both Pere Aragonès and Marta Rovira claimed yesterday in an event in Geneva. The only thing in common is that, according to the head of the government, it is the extreme right that causes these cases. From Switzerland, the republicans belittled the situation that the President of the Spanish Government is experiencing, but at the same time they demanded that his legs not “shake” in the face of a “false and unfair accusation”, like all the ones he has suffered, in Rovira’s opinion , independence with the process.
Esquerra moved its electoral campaign to Geneva. For a single day. It is where Rovira has lived since March 2018. ERC deputy Ruben Wagensberg has been with him since the end of last year. He left Catalonia to prepare his defense on the occasion of the terrorism investigations in the cause opened by Democratic Tsunami.
The event was held in the Grand Salon Impact Hub, with a seemingly intimate character, with armchairs in the middle, conversations in twos and threes and the reading of biographical passages by Aurora Bertrana, a Catalan writer exiled in 1936. The scenography served to “claim exile”, but also for the republicans to denounce to Sánchez what they point to as the true political and judicial persecution “now that we are talking about feelings”, in the words of Aragonès.
In this way, the ERC candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat intervened to ensure that “backing down” in the face of the accusations of Manos Limpias and Hazte Oír “is giving the right and victory to the extreme right”.
Rovira was also harsh: “I recommend to Sánchez that he does an act of political conscience like today, that he harasses Spanish republicans and socialists, people who gave their lives for democracy and human resources”. “It’s not appropriate that his legs are hurting him when we have to fight for more democracy and more human rights”, he concluded.
“It seems that they have now discovered the actions of the ultra-right,” added Aragonès mockingly at an event, the one in Geneva, which he believes should serve to avoid normalizing repression. The president assured that independence, and especially the Left, has been able to overcome “the repression and arbitrariness of the sewers and some courts” aligned with the ultra-right. And he turned to history, together with Oriol Junqueras, to affirm that the attacks are not on a personal scale, but a whole collective project. That’s why he called out that “the answer is to never go back”.
Wagensberg was equally critical. Not so much with Sánchez, with whom he acknowledged that in a certain way and at first he felt represented. He focused the criticism on the subsequent reaction of the PSOE on the networks or on Saturday at the demonstration of support at the headquarters of Ferraz: “Empathy, as I saw the reaction of the Socialist Party, has been disappearing”. The ERC deputy also reproached Salvador Illa and the PSC for not having sent him a single message of support.
Junqueras reviewed the exile during the Franco regime, but he also had time to send an invective to Junts: “Weak projects need to exercise the cult of a personality, they revolve around a specific person; the strong projects are the collective ones”.
