Good government, national ambition and “preparing the Catalonia of the future.” With the figure of Carles Puigdemont – who promises to be present at the first investiture debate no matter what – as a claim and without screens in the way, Junts has raised the campaign without fanfare and with a proactive tone, with the commitment to lower taxes, to carry out a profound reform in the administration to reduce bureaucracy and to demand an economic agreement so that Catalonia collects 100% of the taxes. Program and proposals to counteract attacks from rivals who call your project personalistic.
From beginning to end, all post-convergent artillery has been focused on Salvador Illa’s PSC, which has an advantage in the polls. On the other hand, Puigdemont has measured and limited the reproaches to the Republican Left, with whom he intends to reach an agreement again after 12-M. In any case, JxCat trusts that tomorrow’s appointment with the polls will resolve the “technical tie” that has existed since 2017 between the two sovereigntist formations, a scenario that, in its opinion, will clarify the panorama and facilitate the agreement since –they argue– “one strategy will not neutralize the other.”
The initial idea of ??JxCat was to polarize the battle between its leader and the socialists and the starting signal, marked by the five-day reflection period of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, provided the formation with ammunition for this and to highlight that the Tomorrow’s elections “are about the future of Catalonia.” The polls have reinforced this scheme and Puigdemont insists that he is the only pro-independence candidate who can beat the PSC, which is why he asks to concentrate the pro-sovereignty vote on his candidacy and with that catchphrase he appeals to the undecided. “Don’t let the vote be dispersed,” Puigdemont asked this Friday from Cotlliure in a statement in the morning in which he also asked to send an unequivocal message to Europe.
Thus, in the final stretch, Junts has avoided unforced errors and maintains that if there is a massive mobilization tomorrow and they manage to activate the abstentionists who in the previous electoral cycle reduced the independence movement’s results account, they can have the first parliamentary group in the next legislature.
So much so, that parallels have been drawn with what happened in 1980, when the polls predicted the victory of the socialist Joan Reventós and Jordi Pujol won, who 24 hours before the official start of the race expressed his support for Puigdemont in an event in Martorell and this Friday he did it again through a video shared by former Minister Quim Forn.
A gesture that the leader of JxCat reciprocated – other candidates have also done so – a few days later when he openly claimed his legacy and what Convergència did for Catalunya after the Franco regime. In fact, one of JxCat’s mottos is similar to that of Pujol in his first elections: “Let’s lift up Catalonia.”
At the close of the campaign, Junts packed the old schools of Elna this Friday, the same one where they presented their candidacies at the beginning of April. It is an act that was not initially planned, since the closing of the electoral race was going to be put in Barcelona, ??in Jardinets de Gràcia with a last symbolic telematic intervention by the former Catalan president.
However, the response of the party’s supporters, who have filled the Jean Carrère venue in Argelers almost every day, motivated the change of plans to show muscle and try to mobilize the cadres and turn around the polls. “Gentlemen of Madrid, get ready, we are coming,” Puigdemont exclaimed this Friday, evoking the “restitution” of him as president of the Generalitat after being dismissed in 2017 by article 155 of the Constitution.
