Junts will not agree with the Aliança Catalana formation, the party led by the mayor of Ripoll, Sílvia Orriols, in the next legislature if that organization obtains parliamentary representation. This is what the former president Carles Puigdemont, candidate of the post-convergence formation in the elections of May 12, assured this Monday, in an interview with the Més 324 program of Catalan public television.
“I will never negotiate with any extreme right-wing or far-right formation,” the independence leader stressed when asked about it. Likewise, he has accused the rest of the parties of talking about that party that now has no parliamentary representation to weaken Junts.
“We talk [about Aliança Catalana] above our possibilities. There has been interest in inflating that,” complains the former Catalan president, who compares this strategy that in the post-convergent ranks they attribute above all to Esquerra with the one followed by François Mitterrand with the Front National of Jean Marie Le Pen when the ultra formation was extraparliamentary, with the aim of weakening Jacques Chirac. “I will not participate in that strategy that Mitterrand already tried, which was disastrous: To weaken his rival, Chirac’s Gaullist right, he gave wings to an extra-parliamentary phenomenon such as Le Pen’s National Front and look where the Socialist Party is today and where is the National Front”.
On this topic, Puigdemont also recalled that in the previous electoral contest the PDECat presented itself on its own and added 77,000 votes that were not transformed into parliamentary representation, alluding to the fact that there is talk of other political forces that could subtract votes from JxCat.
The former Catalan president has also reiterated his intention to “recompose” the unity between the sovereigntist forces and has assured that if he has “the possibility of leading a Government” the first person he will call is President Pere Aragonès to try to form an executive. “I think we have to go together in the next stage in Catalonia,” remarked Puigdemont, who believes that “the nation is at risk” in the coming years.
The post-convergent leader, who has been interviewed at TV3’s Perpignan headquarters, has admitted that the strategy between Junts and ERC until now was different. However, he considers that the scenario may change after the May 12 elections. “There may be something in these elections that will help us get out of the mess, that will break a technical tie that has existed for many years in the independence movement and that has perhaps neutralized us,” said Puigdemont, adding that “there are common denominators.” between the two former partners of the Government. “More than we imagine and want to acknowledge,” he added. “We cannot get lost in partisan battles when the nation is at stake,” he concluded.
In another order of things, given the possibility of the PSC reaching an agreement with the PP and the commons, with a formula similar to that of the Barcelona City Council, with which Xavier Trias was deprived of the mayor’s office of the Catalan capital, the leader of JxCat has reiterated that this would have consequences in the Spanish legislature.
Regarding the doubts that ERC raises about his return, Puigdemont has reiterated that he will return for the investiture debate and has maintained that between the situation in 2018, when his return had also been promised, and now the big difference is the Amnesty law, with who will be able to return to Catalonia, he emphasizes, although there is a risk of being arrested.
