“Anyone who wants to be president of the Kingdom of Spain, if we are decisive, will explain to us what plans they have for the citizens of Catalonia. I assure you that not a single vote will be to continue doing what has been done up to now, which is failing to comply, not paying and lying to Catalonia”. This is how the candidate of Junts per Catalunya, Míriam Nogueras, pronounced during the electoral campaign before the possibility of being decisive in the next legislature. Last night he assured that they will not make Pedro Sánchez president “in exchange for nothing” and that the “priority” of his training is Catalonia.
With seven seats, one less than those obtained by the JxCat coalition in 2019 – made up of PDECat and the cadres that are now in the party of Jordi Turull and Laura Borràs – the post-convergents will have the key to the inauguration of the next president of the government.
If the bloc of Moncloa partners from the previous legislature gets Junts to join it, Sánchez could revalidate the coalition executive with Sumar. In fact, those from Turull can tip the balance even with an abstention and that also has a price.
In the post-convergent training they were convinced that the current situation could occur and warned that they are willing to withstand the pressure if necessary. When it came to setting conditions, Nogueras put on the table the transfer of powers to Catalonia to organize a self-determination referendum, which Jordi Turull, Marta Rovira and Joan Herrera had already demanded in the Congress of Deputies in 2014. “That’s it,” summarized a leader last night.
But the message has not always been so clear and if on some occasions it was set as a red line and as minimum conditions that an amnesty law be approved and that there be a referendum, on others they simply advocated charging in advance in a negotiation with the Socialists or not setting prerequisites.
Yesterday Nogueras remembered Xavier Trias, whom the Socialists deprived of the mayor’s office at the last minute after a pact with the PP… and also Carles Puigdemont, just after pointing out that “Pedro Sánchez has many duties with Catalonia.” “We are aware of the strength we have now and we will not fail”, concluded the leader of JxCat in Madrid, who recalled that they have already endured pressure and criticism in the past and warned that “her pulse will not tremble in continuing to maintain the position”.
Likewise, he reached out to the Republicans to “recover unity” in the Lower House. “A new stage is opening for change and for recovering unity. Things have to start being done differently,” he said.
With these results, what is certain is that in Junts there will be a debate in the coming days about what should be done now, although Puigdemont remarked in the campaign that Sánchez would not be president with the support of his own.
To shake off the pressure, there are those who remembered last night at the Junts headquarters, at the Hotel Barceló Sants, that the general elections had been repeated on the last two occasions: there were in December 2015 and June 2016 and in 2019, in April and in November. On the contrary, there were also those who expected that as of today a list of demands to negotiate would begin to be drawn up. “Why do we want to be decisive if we don’t negotiate later?” Ask other voices in the formation.
Despite the joy for the decisive role, Junts fell back compared to 2019 due to the abstention of the critical independence movement and the concentration of the vote in the PSC in a highly polarized campaign given the possibility that PP and Vox would join. Thus, the formation did not achieve one of its objectives, to once again surpass Esquerra at the polls, as happened in the municipal elections on May 28. All in all, JxCat falls far less than the Republicans and will have the same seats as his former partner in Congress.
