One of the keys to the Parliamentary elections on May 12 is the struggle on the independence spectrum, between Esquerra Republicana and Junts per Catalunya. But the post-convergent formation is aware that they cannot focus all their electoral artillery on their former partner. That would be leaving a lot of free space for Salvador Illa’s PSC to run. For this reason, this Sunday the general secretary of JxCat, Jordi Turull, has put the republicans and the socialists in the same bag. From Fontanilles (Baix Empordà), he has referred to “the de facto bipartite of resignation and going along” that these two formations represent in his opinion. However, he has placed special emphasis on criticizing the first secretary of the Catalan socialists.
The independence leader, in the same weekend in which Illa has been anointed as electoral leader and has renewed his captaincy at the head of the PSC, has assured that he is the candidate of “no to everything that comes out of Catalonia; no to fair financing, no to the transfer of powers on immigration; no to amnesty; no to the airport transfer; “no to everything that comes out of the Catalans.” “He has the vocation of civil governor,” he concluded.
Although both parties, JxCat and PSC, have been circumstantial partners in the Parliament in this last year and a half of the legislature, by opposing the Government of Pere Aragonès, for weeks now in the Catalan Chamber the post-convergent formation has reproached Illa for not exercising head of the opposition and that he is the “lifesaver” of the Catalan Executive, especially after the pact between the Republicans and the Socialists for the budgets of the Generalitat, which are now a dead letter since the project fell last week in the vote of the hemicycle.
In fact, in the plans of the post-convergents, since the agreement for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez was sealed with the PSOE last November, thinking about the Catalan race, they had already planned to put Illa in the target as the election approached. date of the regional elections, considering that ERC could be overtaken and that they should not dedicate all the criticism to another sovereignist formation.
Thus, this Sunday has been an appetizer of what will come when the electoral campaign intensifies: warnings about a tripartite future and trying to wear down the PSC, which won the 2021 elections and to which JxCat – like ERC – assures that he will not vote to preside over the Generalitat.
In any case, Junts still does not have an official candidate, although Turull has highlighted today that this coming week it will be known who the leader of JxCat on 12-M is. Everyone – he too – assumes that it will be former president Carles Puigdemont. “We are hopeful that starting next week a stage of excitement and hope will begin; we will have the best candidate to define the four years to come, a president with the nation in his head and in his heart,” he said. added, in reference to Puigdemont, who, in his opinion, will contribute “ambition for the country and solvency”, not only to relaunch the independence project, but also to “recover the prestige of public services”, after the years of the Esquerra government .
Everything seems to indicate that the former Catalan president, now an MEP, will put his all into the race on May 12 and that he will renounce being the candidate for the European elections in June, which was what he had planned before the surprise electoral advance. . This has been pointed out in recent days by various sources and MEP Toni Comín even reinforced that idea this weekend by stating in an interview in Vilaweb that he could lead the JxCat candidacy on June 9 if Puigdemont does not do so.
