When on November 2 Oriol Junqueras, and not Pere Aragonès, was in charge of publicly detailing the ERC-PSOE agreement for the Amnesty law, there was talk of a possible internal struggle to present himself in the Catalan elections; when it transpired this week that the president of the Generalitat will repeat as a candidate, the murmur was about an electoral advance. This week ERC has chosen to try to dispel all doubts.
“We have many challenges and we must face them with all the tools; that is why Esquerra Republicana, in next year’s elections, I am convinced that, as President Companys said, we will win again”. Aragonès has not changed his mind and wanted to make it clear yesterday that he intends to exhaust the legislature. He points to February 2025 as a likely date, as of now.
The president of the Generalitat and national coordinator of Esquerra has all the ballots to repeat as number one. Yesterday, at the party’s national council, the leadership proposed his name. It has the endorsement of Oriol Junqueras and Marta Rovira.
The intention of the head of the Catalan Government is to exhaust the legislature. The completion of the four-year mandate has not happened since the presidency of José Montilla (from November 2006 to December 2010). Doing so would allow Aragonès to counteract the weakness of a Government supported solely by the 33 ERC deputies in Parliament with the image of the solidity of a legislature not interrupted prematurely.
On paper, the Catalan Executive is working with this idea. But both the Catalan Government and the ERC admit that to fulfill this they would have to count on the approval by the Parliament of the new budgets, those of 2024. The party takes it for granted that the numbers will be endorsed and that they will have, at least , the support of the PSC, since according to Esquerra, the general accounts of the State are linked to the approval of the Catalans. One is not without the other, as highlighted by party spokeswoman Raquel Sans in a recent interview.
This presumed and sought-after solidity would be more consolidated, according to the Republicans, if it were the first time in just over a decade that three Generalitat budgets were approved consecutively.
Aragonès drew on the horizon the Catalan elections, beyond, “an internationally recognized referendum” on the independence of Catalonia, and for who knows when a “glorious” future for Oriol Junqueras and Marta Rovira. The first is awaiting amnesty, still disqualified after the Supreme Court ruling of October 2019, and the general secretary has been in Switzerland since March 2018.
“Some of us take on the work from the institutions, but in tomorrow’s pages there will be glorious pages written by Oriol Junqueras. New colleagues will have to take up the pen and I am convinced that it will be up to Marta and Oriol to write new pages of victories” for Catalonia, assured the head of the Catalan Government.
Junqueras and Aragonès showed harmony. The president of ERC spoke briefly at the beginning of the national council meeting. “Today is a day of joy”, he said just before the start of his parliament, before remarking that Catalonia “has the best possible Government (…) led by Pere Aragonès”. “He is the best candidate to stand again in the elections to the Parliament of Catalonia and revalidate the confidence of the public in a second legislature”, he stressed. “For me it is an honor”, said Junqueras.
The President of the Generalitat, for his part, thanked the support of the ERC management and pointed out the need to “complete with a second legislature the work of Government” under his command to develop, among other aspects, “an ambitious economic policy that will leave behind a European spa model and return to being Europe’s factory and laboratory, with a knowledge industry that generates opportunities for all”.
