Whatever Carles Puigdemont decides about the immediate future, one thing seems clear: Today will be the first major electoral act of Junts per Catalunya for the Parliament elections on May 12. The former Catalan president will reveal from the Elna City Council (France) whether he heads the JxCat list in the elections and whether he also renounces being in the candidacy for the European elections in June. He will do it with a conference of just over half an hour, supported by the party’s senior staff. The mayor of the town in the south of France will welcome you.
Given the forecast that there will be a large influx of people in the town, it is planned that beyond the 400 seats available to the Town Hall, a giant screen and chairs will also be installed outside so that those who do not fit inside can continue their intervention.
The choice of Elna, 30 kilometers from the border, is not coincidental. It had a key role in welcoming exiles and was the first municipality in the French region of Catalunya del Nord to recognize the right to use Catalan, sources from Puigdemont’s office in the European Parliament highlight.
Since the electoral advance emerged a week ago, everyone in Junts has pointed to Puigdemont as a candidate and for a few days now in the party’s rumor mill it has been said that he will resign from heading the JxCat list in the European elections on June 9 . In this way, his commitment to the Catalan electoral contest will be clear to the skeptics, reason the sources that point to that scenario.
In that sense, the secretary general, Jordi Turull, already commented a few days ago that it would be “strange” for the former Catalan president, now an MEP, to be a candidate in two elections with less than a month apart, since there is incompatibility for be a deputy in both chambers at the same time. “A decision has to be made, and when you go all out on something, you go all out,” Turull remarked.
Thus, if the former Catalan president resigns from the European elections – a fact that would imply the loss of the legal immunity conferred by the European parliamentarian act –, Junts will have to choose a new candidate and the former minister and now MEP Toni Comín has already offered himself for lead that list if Puigdemont does not.
According to a survey by the Ipsos firm for La Vanguardia, the post-convergent formation would obtain one seat. Now Junts has three, although at the beginning of the European Parliament’s term, in 2019, it had two and added a third after Brexit was completed.
According to the JxCat regulations for the primaries of the Parliament elections, today is the deadline to present the candidacies to be number one on the list in the four constituencies, so that if the former Catalan president, in a twist of script, decided at the last minute not being a candidate on 12-M, there is little room for others to step forward.
Taking into account the public statements of all the post-convergent leaders, the calendar and the fact that Comín has already rushed to offer himself to be a candidate in June, everything indicates that Puigdemont will run in the regional elections. In fact, his lawyer, criminal lawyer Gonzalo Boye, supported that thesis last Friday when he assured that the former Catalan president is willing to return to Catalonia and be arrested if necessary to be president of the Generalitat. The lawyer also highlighted that the legal scenario has changed with the foreseeable final approval of the Amnesty law and its entry into force within a few weeks.
For the top positions on the Barcelona list, which will not be definitively approved until April 6 at a meeting of the national council, names have been raised such as that of the still president of the Parliament Anna Erra or that of the former councilor and president of the national council of Junts, Josep Rull.
The person who will not be in the candidacy with all certainty is the general secretary of the formation Jordi Turull, since he is disqualified by the ruling of the process and the 1-O and neither will the president of the formation, Laura Borràs, who is also disqualified by the irregularities during her time as president of the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes, although she has no final ruling.
At today’s event in Elna there will be a notable absence. That of the president of the Catalan Chamber. Erra promised months ago to announce the Mercat del Ram in Vic, an agricultural and livestock fair that is celebrated at this time and is very important in the Osona region. Erra was also mayor of that municipality.
