All the polls published to date predict that the PSC will win the elections next Sunday, although the difference with respect to Junts and ERC, the next best placed – in that order – by the demoscopy, will be decisive in knowing the possibilities of governing the socialist candidate, Salvador Illa. These differences and the subsequent game of alliances could open the doors of Palau or throw a poisoned scenario, “a blockade”, in Illa’s words, which could lead to an electoral repetition that would be “a lack of respect for the citizens” for the socialist.
Illa sees himself as the winner of the elections, but he was also the most voted in 2021, and was relegated to the opposition. Now he is determined to run for the investiture: “If I have more votes and deputies, I am going to take a step forward and I am going to speak and seek support to have a legislature that is as stable as possible,” he remarked this Tuesday in an interview on Onda Cero. , in which he called on Junts and ERC to clarify their strategies.
His objective is to govern, preferably alone, and to do so he will need to overcome his investiture, that is, obtain the support of an absolute majority of deputies in the first vote (68) or more votes in favor than against in a second. The PSC candidate will not be enough with the votes he can obtain from the common people, for whom many polls predict even lower representation than the current one (eight seats), which is why he will require the help of one of the two major pro-independence parties.
All the focuses are directed at ERC. The greater ideological affinity and the extended hand that Illa has practiced with the Government of Pere Aragonès could facilitate the agreement, but the Republicans do not clarify their position and in their ranks there is reluctance to another pact with the socialists (they remain in Congress, in three deputations, in the Barcelona City Council…). Perhaps ERC is not willing to give Illa more than an abstention that would fall short.
With the scenarios drawn by the surveys, the socialist candidate trusts in an important variable to unravel governability: that the independence movement does not gain a majority. Convinced that this will be the case, Illa asked the independence movement this Tuesday to “not block me,” to “let me govern,” with a direct appeal to the Republicans: “In this legislature I have been respectful. I won in 2021, Aragonès was invested, and despite having failed I have not sought short-termism, but rather the common good of Catalonia,” he justified.
The PSC candidate asked for a certain reciprocity, calling on the rest of the parties to work with a “constructive vision” regarding possible pacts and to “define themselves.” Illa promised this Tuesday to “talk to everyone” –except Vox and Aliança Catalana–, also with Junts, although “they are not my priority,” he admitted. “I want to know what they are going to do. “If they are going to continue blocking, generating instability, or are they going to respect the result, if the Catalans’ will to open a new time is confirmed on Sunday,” he asked.
