The starting point of the contacts between Junts per Catalunya and the PSOE for the eventual investiture of Pedro Sánchez have been marked at all times by mistrust, although the agreement for the Congress Board has smoothed over differences and laid the foundations for a possible agreement .
The fact that Salvador Illa is – as is logical considering that he is the first secretary of the PSC – the one chosen by Sánchez for the Catalan portfolio has raised distrust in Junts. Both its secretary general, Jordi Turull, and the man leading the negotiations, former president Carles Puigdemont, have expressed their misgivings this Thursday after the meeting held yesterday by the leader of the Catalan socialists with the acting president of the Government and general secretary. of the PSOE in Ferraz.
“It seems to me that giving prominence to the person who deceived Junts the day before the pact of shame in Barcelona to prevent Xavier Trias from being mayor is a very strange way of showing us that they are trustworthy,” Turull said in a message on the social network X, formerly Twitter. In turn, Puigdemont has also expressed his distrust in the same sense as the general secretary of JxCat and has supported his position. “Jordi Turull does well to remember the reasons why Salvador Illa can never be a valid interlocutor to generate trust,” said the now MEP.
For his part, the first secretary of the Catalan socialists, in an interview on Catalunya Ràdio, has come out against these messages and has assured that he “will not get into that.” “I’m not looking for any role,” Illa concluded. “That the PSC obtained the results it obtained and has the weight it has in Catalan politics is obvious to everyone,” added the former Minister of Health.
Turull refers to the mayor of Barcelona, ??for which Jaume Collboni combined the support of the Ada Colau commons with the votes of Daniel Sirera’s PP. In Junts they were counting on leading the mayor’s office of the Catalan capital after winning the elections on May 28. Beyond the discomfort over the maneuver itself, the post-convergent formation felt especially bad about the fact that in the previous hours this movement was hidden along with Barcelona en Comú and the Popular Party by the PSC, since they had exchanged opinions several times.
On the other hand, it should be taken into account that the relationship between JxCat and the PSC in the Parliament is fluid in the need to oppose the Government of Pere Aragonès. At the sector level, both groups have expressed harmony since the beginning of the legislature in various folders, such as that related to infrastructure or large projects – Hard Rock, fourth beltway, expansion of the El Prat airport…–. Illa is the president of the socialist parliamentary group, while the post-convergent party is led by Albert Batet. The relationship between both spaces is a different matter if tangible and sectoral policies are left aside and one enters into the quicksand of the process. In that section the relationship is different.
