Pedro Sánchez has wanted to downplay any significance to a possible electoral candidacy of Carles Puigdemont in view of the new appointment with the polls in Catalonia on May 12. “The candidate Puigdemont is still a candidate who already presented himself in 2021 and in 2017, there is nothing new in that either,” the President of the Government warned upon his arrival this Thursday at the meeting of the European Council in Brussels, a few hours before the former president of the Generalitat reveals his intentions before 12-M, at a Junts per Catalunya event in the French town of Elna. In 2017, the Ciudadanos candidate, Inés Arrimadas, won the Catalan elections, while in 2021 the PSC candidate, Salvador Illa, came in first place, although neither of them were able to govern. On this last occasion, the Junts list came in third position, behind those of the PSC and Esquerra Republicana.
Faced with this 12-M, in any case, Sánchez wanted to highlight, as general secretary of the PSOE, his determined commitment because, this time, the first secretary of the PSC manages to be the president of the Generalitat. “We have the best candidate,” he said about Illa. “And not only because it is, but because it has also shown during these three years that a useful opposition can be created, one that puts the general interest of the Catalans at the forefront,” de Illa highlighted.
Sánchez has thus contrasted the opposition that Illa has played these years in Catalonia with the attitude that Alberto Núñez Feijóo maintains in Spain as leader of the main opposition party. “In Spain it is very sophisticated, it would be impossible to see the Popular Party supporting the general State budgets of my Government,” he lamented. Illa, on the other hand, “has done it in Catalonia”, by supporting Pere Aragonès’ public accounts project, despite the fact that it finally did not see the light of day this year, due to the rejection of the commons, which led to the president of the Generalitat to precipitate the regional elections. “This is proof that creating a useful opposition is how elections are won, in Catalonia and in the rest of Spain,” he stated.
