ERC has had to compete during the pre-campaign against the projection of the figure of Carles Puigdemont. Now, in the campaign, he also has to fight against the repercussions of the possible resignation of Pedro Sánchez. By itself, the announcement by the President of the Government has already marked the electoral race; if he finally stops, he will put her on the back burner.
Republicans do not want this latter scenario. They need both the echo of the content of their proposals and the hyperactivity of Pere Aragonès to try to set the pace again. Oriol Junqueras was clear about this at the campaign kick-off event this Thursday in Barcelona: “It is very difficult for me to understand that a political leader takes five days to finish deciding if they want to continue working for their country.” Aragonès himself even more so: “These days what we have to do is talk about the country. “I am also deeply in love with my wife, but I never give up when the extreme right attacks.”
The ERC candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat has even dared to assure that the PSOE and the PSC, as well as Junts, are more interested in talking about Sánchez “because that is how corruption cases are allowed to be talked about, whether called the Koldo case or three per cent”. Salvador Illa appeared this week for mask fraud.
The Republicans have been responsible for putting on the table, among other issues, the need for self-financing for Catalonia, a constitutional means to hold a self-determination referendum, the creation of a Linguistic Policy Department to promote Catalan, a change model in the management of the runways at El Prat airport to absorb more intercontinental flights. But in the background, raising all these debates, Esquerra has also had the objective of fighting against the advantage that Puigdemont’s image alone has and the “restitution” of his figure. .
“We are forced to be much more proactive in the face of a JxCat that is too much for them just by presenting Puigdemont on the poster,” they say in ERC. “We have many proposals. And the others, what proposals do they have? “No to everything [the PSC] and I to everything [Puigdemont], contrasting with everything for Catalonia,” stressed the number two on the ERC list and vice president of the Government, Laura Vilagrà, in an event in which they also Laia Cañigueral (Girona), Marta Vilalta (Lleida) and Raquel Sans (Tarragona) took the floor, as well as Gabriel Rufián and Marta Rovira.
The polls are not favorable to Aragonès’ interests. They are at a disadvantage compared to the polls that were published for the Catalan elections of February 2021, when until a few days before starting the campaign their party was first. The current ones place him behind the PSC candidate, Salvador Illa, and the number one of the post-convergents. Of course, that third position would allow ERC to once again be decisive in forming a new Government. Of one sign or another, since Pere Aragonès and Oriol Junqueras have always avoided any pronouncement on alliance policies.
