With Xavier Trias as a Junts candidate in last year’s municipal elections in Barcelona, ??former presidents Jordi Pujol and Artur Mas were already seen in the orbit of Carles Puigdemont’s party, which was founded in the summer of 2020 after splitting hairs with him. PDECat. As an anecdote, in that electoral campaign, both in the Catalan capital and in Reus, the vote for Convergència was requested by mistake. It was due to a mistake by Trias at an event in Sants. The same thing happened to the former mayor of the Tarragona city, Carles Pellicer.
A few weeks later, before the general elections, Trias himself detailed that the two former presidents mentioned above and he would vote the same, for JxCat. To make matters worse, Mas, who in the municipal elections had supported both Junts and PDECat candidates, accompanied Miriam Nogueras at an event with businessmen and explicitly supported JxCat to the detriment of PDECat, which had Espai CiU in its nomenclature.
That was a first step. In the recent battle of 12-M, in which the turquoise green characteristic of Junts has been covered by a blue reminiscent of the time of the nationalist federation Convergència i Unió, that dynamic has been consolidated. JxCat continues to claim itself as a transversal space, with different currents and ideologies, but the convergent legacy, claimed even by Puigdemont openly, is no longer a taboo or a burden and is once again a source of pride.
In this last electoral contest there have been evident similarities between the claims and slogans of Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC) and those of Junts, with allusions to “raising Catalonia” and slogans such as “Catalonia needs to be respected.” Also in the program and in the demand to expand the powers of Catalan self-government and to achieve an economic agreement beyond asking for independence. “We need resources, economic and also legal. And skills,” Puigdemont exclaimed at a rally. “We need them to delegate powers to us, we have to take them out of their hands,” he insisted. But not only that, leaders who rejected the label of “post-convergents” have spoken these days about the time when Convergència led the Government of the Generalitat as its own.
Something similar has happened with Pujol’s legacy. His figure has gradually emerged from ostracism since 2021. After several public appearances at various book presentations, on the anniversary of the Parliament of Catalonia or even at events organized by the Government of the Generalitat, such as those of Ramon Trias Fargas last year, The former president stood behind the Junts lectern at a dinner with militants in Martorell 24 hours before the official start of the 12-M campaign. He asked Puigdemont and JxCat to vote. “Now it’s Junts and I will vote for Puigdemont,” said the former president, founder of CDC, who said that the organization headed by Jordi Turull is the one that most resembles the party he founded. Mas also expressed himself in this sense a few days later at an event with Turull in Vilassar de Mar. The two former presidents reiterated their support for Puigdemont when time was running out to ask for the vote, on the last day of the campaign, after the final JxCat rally. in Elna.
These gestures were reciprocated by the leader of Junts. “I was a member of Convergència since 1983 and I did not stop doing so until the PDECat was created [in 2016]. I feel very represented by what Convergència did for Catalunya. I remember where we came from and what the Pujol governments did to lift the country and give national character to the policies,” said the former president. “I feel represented by that policy that raised Catalonia and brought it out of the darkness of Francoism,” he added, in addition to ensuring that the support of Pujol and Mas, for that very reason, was an “honor for him.” He wanted to give special importance to Mas’s support by remembering that in 2021 he supported the PDECat that was then led by former councilor Ànchels Chacón and did not obtain representation.
Puigdemont spoke in this sense in a press conference organized by the Catalan News Agency after several candidates and members of their training had opened the melon of the convergent legacy from the stage in Algiers.
The first to do so was the young mayor of Cabrera de Mar, Òscar Fernández, who in an event with Maresme militants vindicated the figure of Pujol and defended the idea of ??“gaining the maximum of powers” ??for the Generalitat as well as its management. although he, due to his age, did not live through that time.
Representative Glòria Freixa, number 10 for Barcelona, ??did the same a few days later at a rally with supporters from the Catalan capital. “I am from the generation of President Pujol, that president who had a nation in his head and in his heart. He could have made one more autonomous community, he could have renounced everything, but he did not renounce anything and thought of Catalonia as a State,” she highlighted. Freixa finished the job by showing his chest for the Catalan school, the Mossos d’Esquadra and TV3 and spoke of a “premeditated asphyxiation” against Catalonia, with a quote from Trias Fargas, who had been Pujol’s councilor. A few days later she spoke in similar terms at a press conference about the JxCat program to reduce bureaucracy. Without it being so obvious, she vindicated convergent governments.
Likewise, Pujol’s triumph in 1980 was evoked these days – several parallels have been drawn between that campaign and the current one – when the polls placed the PSC in first place and CiU won. It was Agustí Colomines, who does not have a Junts card but was already in the CDC’s orbit during the time of Artur Mas as president of the CatDem think tank, the former Ramon Trias Fargas foundation. He did not mention Pujol but he did refer to him and recalled in his first intervention at a rally that in 1980 the polls, as in 2024, said that the PSC would win. “And we already know who won next,” he added. Puigdemont picked up the glove and made that reference his own shortly after, without naming Pujol. However, the 12-M scrutiny made history, in this case, not rhyme; the socialists won a week ago.
A person who knows the workings of Junts well believes this substantial change is due, in part, to the fact that the figure of Pujol has been recovering spaces in Catalan public and political life in recent years and it is no longer a reason for shame to be a convergent . He also points out that the PDECat is no longer there – it lowered the blinds before Christmas – and that being independent, very popular at some points in the process, is no longer worth as much. In fact, some leaders like Jaume Giró, who was not there at the time of CDC, have been pioneers in embodying the old acronyms. “It is no longer a sin to be convergent,” says this person, who shares the words of another source who also knows the internal dynamics of Junts and believes that there is “a liberation after being silent for so long.” He adds another issue that, in his opinion, is not minor: “both PSC and Esquerra have tried in these years to take the place of CDC, which was the centrality.”
A relevant figure in the convergent and post-convergent space underlines another detail: The best results that Junts obtained in the municipal elections were from the hands of candidates from the more pragmatic wing and identified with the convergent legacy, Xavier Fonollosa in Martorell; Marc Castells in Igualada; Jordi Masquef in Figueres; Meritxell Roigé in Tortosa; and, above all, Xavier Trias in Barcelona. It was not advertised, but the management took note.
However, the first stone for the current scenario was laid at the 2022 Junts congress, which was held in Argelers, in the Jean Carrère space, in the same venue where the rallies of this campaign were held.
