As the campaign progresses, which on paper ends next Friday night, it seems clearer that in the elections of May 12, management and self-government, with its different aspects, be it financing – above all – or powers of the Generalitat, are the great issue of this electoral contest. More than independence, which has not disappeared from the scene but no longer monopolizes the focus than in previous parliamentary elections. The TV3 debate, like the previous ones, has shown this trend this Tuesday and that the day-to-day life of the next Catalan executive and the country’s model in each area is more important today than it seemed in other appointments with the polls.
Thus, although there was a block related to the relationship between Catalonia and Spain, the financing with permission of the amnesty has slipped into that section, which the PSC has been accused of from the right and the extreme right, and independence has not been the main reason for discussion between one another. On the other hand, the issues that concern groups in the Parliament such as drought, housing, security, occupations, language policy, taxation or infrastructure and macroprojects have been.
But if something else has become clear in the first stages of the debate, in which the candidates ahead try to consolidate the support they already have in their pockets and to risk little, it is that the Catalan battle of 12-M is something of three. The candidates had the option of asking a specific question to a rival and the one who has received the most questions has been the number three of Junts, Josep Rull, who replaces Carles Puigdemont in the electoral debates and has been questioned on three occasions: of Vox (Ignacio Garriga), of the CUP (Laia Estrada) and of the PP (Alejandro Fernández), on account of security, immigration, occupations or macroprojects. In second place were the leader of the PSC, Salvador Illa, who was questioned by President Pere Aragonès and the leader of Ciudadanos, Carlos Carrizosa. Illa has dedicated her turn to the ERC candidate, asking her to distance herself from Junts, and also the candidate of the commons, Jéssica Albich, who has raised the flag of housing policies from the first minute.
In this exchange, a scene that occurred in the debate organized by La Vanguardia and RAC1 in the general elections last July was repeated, with different protagonists. In July, when Roger Montañola, then the PDECat-Espai CiU candidate, complained that the CUP had set the pace for the last Catalan executives, Albert Botran, the anti-capitalist candidate interrupted him saying “hopefully.” Neither of them obtained representation in those elections. Today it was the leader of the popular Catalans, Fernández, who made that reproach to Rull, with hopefully Estrada in the background.
After that first round of blows, the drought, which is now the main concern of the Catalans despite the fact that the rains of recent weeks have disguised the numbers and improved the situation, has been the excuse to exchange the first reproaches between the candidates in the debate itself, with arguments similar to those that have already been heard in Parliament in monographs and control sessions.
When addressing issues related to security, Illa has revealed that if he becomes president of the Generalitat he will put the now mayor of Santa Coloma de Gramanet and spokesperson for his party, Núria Parlon, at the head of the Department of the Interior, and that the mayor Josep Lluís Trapero will be its general director of the Police.
The word independence was not heard on the set until the presenter introduced the relationship between Catalonia and Spain into the debate. It was introduced by Rull to ask the Republicans to rebuild unity, although Aragonès had requested a referendum from the start and Estrada has also demanded to exercise self-determination. Ciudadanos has started its intervention in that block by attacking TV3 instead of making proposals and has been warned by the moderator, Ariadna Oltra. In any case, Junts has been reproached several times for having brought its convergent gene out of the closet in this campaign and the CUP has disfigured both post-convergents and Republicans who “now compete to be the most pactist, to see who negotiates the most with the Government of Spain and who ‘pujoleas’ more and is more from the peix to the cove.”
In turn, the right, PP, Vox and Ciudadanos have taken the opportunity to try to get votes from the socialists on account of the amnesty, as they have done later with the linguistic policy and the post-electoral pacts, and the PP has accused Illa of lying , remembering that the PSC said that there would be no amnesty. ERC, in turn, has shown its chest for the pardons and Junts, which assures that it wants to govern with Esquerra after 12-M, has taken the opportunity to ask for unity after remembering the 1-O referendum.
The PSC, in a discreet manner at this point in the debate, has spoken of improving financing, of launching the joint tax consortium between the State and the Generalitat and of ending tax competition. He later assured that he wants to help the return of companies that changed headquarters in October 2017, at the height of the process. The Socialists, in turn, have also criticized the PP for its strategy in the Catalan conflict and that “they have not given any proposal to solve the conflict” or that they have used it to get votes outside Catalonia. Furthermore, Illa has demanded from Fernández that the popular party return to linguistic consensus.
Junts, for its part, has rejected the consortium and has ignored the singular financing proposed by ERC to ask “to have the key to the fund and the management of all taxes” and has asked the socialists where at the table they will be if there is a negotiation.
