Albert Botran wants to reissue on Sunday the two seats that the CUP obtained in 2019 on the first occasion that it appeared in Congress and will try to achieve a third deputy for Girona. He vindicates the memory of 2017 and is especially hard on Esquerra for moving away from that spirit.
It began in Madrid with two deputies in 2019 in the middle of the trial of the procés and the hypermobilized independence movement but things have changed. What do you offer your voters to at least maintain the results of then?
In reality, what we offer is precisely not to lose memory. Despite the repression against the 2017 referendum, we do not renounce exercising the right to self-determination and we think that this should once again be at the center of the political objectives of the independence movement, at the center of the political agenda. Unfortunately ERC and also Junts have been putting that demand on hold. In the municipal elections we have seen it very clearly, that the independence movement has disappeared from the speeches of both Junts and Esquerra. We continue to insist that this country not because they repressed it in 2017 has buried that claim. What we assert is precisely that memory.
Preventing a PP and Vox government that you have described as a criminal organization and gang of thugs, can it be a good argument to agree with the PSOE?
We would never vote for a PP and Vox government. The dilemma is that if an alternative majority is to be formed, the independence movement must assert its claims. Due to the logic of the lesser evil, we continue with our tongue receding, we continue with repressive cases and we continue with the fact that we do not want to attend to that majority demand for the right to self-determination. If a candidate wants the votes of the independence movement, and obviously the PP and Vox are ruled out, those votes must be asserted.
Are you one of those who believe that the worse the better, that is, with a government PP Vox could help mobilize?
No, we have never thought that the worse the better, but we have never thought that the lesser evil should guide us either, in the sense that there are things that did not need the PP and Vox to go wrong, and we must also be able to explain that: espionage with Pegasus, 37 deaths in Melilla, police infiltrations in the movement. These are things that PP and Vox did not need to arrive for them to happen. The lesser evil should be counterargued.
He has criticized the price that ERC sets for agreeing with Sánchez: putting an end to the fiscal deficit, the transfer of Cercanías and maintaining the negotiation with Catalonia. His is a self-determination referendum that even Yolanda Díaz rejects. Do you see the approach realistic?
From the outset no one accepts this demand. Nor have we said that it is the result of an investiture negotiation that we can achieve it. It must be the result of a mobilization of the country. But it is necessary to be ambitious and that is why we talk about self-determination. For people to mobilize again, we have to recover the ambition we had in 2017. No one will give us this, but other smaller things are not given away either. The result of what the Esquerra Republicana has been negotiating over these years is very poor. It is not that they have not given him self-determination or amnesty, it is that neither the transfer of Rodalies, nor the management of European funds, nor a greater presence of Catalan on (audiovisual) platforms, all of them negotiated in the budgets. Therefore, it is not a question of more or less ambitious objectives depending on what a Spanish government is willing to give up, but of more or less ambitious objectives depending on why our people are willing to mobilize.
Do you see the independence movement mobilized for it?
No, not right now, but I precisely think that one of the functions of the CUP is to raise that bar and remember that we must recover this ambition again. There are cycles and we must accept that we will not always be at the top of the mobilization, but it is also true that this town has a drive that never disappears. In 2019, 2017 seemed to be forgotten, and massive mobilization began again. This has not disappeared. As much as they say that the conflict is buried, it has not disappeared. They, the Spanish State, also know this, and that is why until last week we had infiltrators in our movement.
To what do you attribute this demobilization?
It is the result of the repression of the referendum. This would be the first cause. And the second would be some leaderships that did not know how to react to this circumstance and that have not created new scenarios and that have led the country to a state of demobilization and apathy. And the best example would be the current Government of the Generalitat, which despite being from a formation that had not had one since 1939 and therefore arrived with historical energy, has not been noticed. It is a very gray Government.
Are you referring to Junqueras and Puigdemont?
I am referring especially to the management of Junts i Esquerra, yes, yes. I add that we must all do self-criticism, we surely have not done things well but we must remember that the more power, the more responsibility.
What has the CUP done wrong in recent years?
People ask us for more involvement, more participation and more visibility. There are people who have the feeling that we are not very involved. I think not, there is a strong implication; this president is so because of the votes of the CUP that was involved in a negotiation for an investiture whose agreement was good in a social and national key but has come to nothing. But you do have to think from the point of view of the people who say that we should participate more of everything.
In 2018 they prevented the investiture of Jordi Turull when he was going to be jailed. Wasn’t this a hard blow to the independence unit?
Probably, however, there are two nuances. Turull himself has once said that this is a matter of the past, that is to say that he will not be caught here to keep an open wound with the CUP. And the other is that it came from January 30, from the failed investiture of Puigdemont. So we feel very cheated. We had been staunchly defending his investiture. There was no programmatic agreement. Until the same day our four deputies were there to vote for that candidate and no one explained to us why that vote was not given. I believe that the anger and disappointment of that January 30 explains why it was very difficult to change the direction of the vote to an alternative candidate, which in this case was Jordi Turull.
What criticizes Junts?
I think that Junts is ambiguous in many ways, it has partly inherited the historical convergent ambiguity. Yes, he has a more combative pro-independence discourse from some spokespersons, but later we have seen that in the Barcelona campaign with Xavier Trias the pro-independence issue disappeared and what Trias did was unite a conservative vote against Colau. We see these multiple voices that make us doubt, we have only one voice.
What do you think of the battles between Junts and ERC? Could you act as mediators?
Yes, in some cases we have played that role. We live the independence cause as something that transcends us a lot as a party. In other words, our purpose is not to exist as a party and gain space as a party and manage institutions, but rather something superior, which is how to win independence and win social transformations. From this point of view, we believe that the partisan battle gains too much weight. It should not disappear because everyone has their program and it is normal, but the partisanship that exists within the pro-independence group is excessive.
Some pro-independence sectors have asked for abstention, what would you tell them?
We share part of what this abstention expresses. We understand that disappointment and discouragement. But we do think that we must vote and vote for independence because everything that has to be done, all the self-criticism and reconstruction of the independence force, will not be done better if we disappear from the institutions. Giving away spaces to the enemies of the independence movement will not make the duties that the independence movement must do faster or better. We also think that if you want to send a message of criticism to the pro-independence parties, a vote for the CUP also contains that criticism, because the more power, the greater the responsibility. Both Junts and Esquerra have had the presidency and large majorities and the CUP has not.
In the debates of this campaign, he has insisted a lot on the climate crisis and at times it seemed that he was left alone. How does he interpret it?
It is one of the things that worries me the most about having lived these 15 days. All the climatic indicators indicate that we are going to a very critical, very critical situation. These scenarios seem far away to people, but they are not. Ocean waters are warming above all predicted rates and people are saying “the warmer the water will be at the beach.” This is a beastly imbalance of climate, of biodiversity. But it seems that this is like a biblical plague that happens to us outside of our economic and political actions and this is what we struggle to connect. Making certain economic and political decisions leads us to aggravate this warming while making others leads us to mitigate it. But with the excuse that it is a global fact and that what we stop broadcasting here will be broadcast by someone else, nobody makes these decisions. And in the last budget agreement between the Socialists and Esquerra we find projects that are climate denial. On a planet that is heating up, wanting more planes to come, wanting to consume more water, which is the Hard Rock model, and wanting more trucks to circulate in the Fourth Belt is directly climate denialism.
You place a lot of emphasis on mental health, why?
We see that it is an issue that has also disappeared from political priorities, the post-pandemic has managed to place it in the center but it is still quite neglected. Something similar happens with the issue of the climate emergency. You don’t see the political dimension. It is as if it were a problem for everyone to fall into depression or suffer anxiety when in reality it has a lot to do with the economy, with precariousness, with that lack of hope. This discomfort must be politicized.
