The head of the PSC list for the Parliamentary elections, Salvador Illa, favorite in the polls to win at the polls this Sunday, has once again raised this Tuesday his main electoral adversaries, Junts and ERC, if the time has come, and if If the predictions are confirmed and the PSC wins, they will block his possible investiture as president. Illa has been used as an example that, having the opportunity to block the legislature that is now ending and force an electoral advance, he did not do it. In this sense, he has hinted that Junts went to look for the PSC with that objective, when he voluntarily left the Government in October 2022.
“I have not blocked when I have had the option to block. I could have forced an election. When the government collapsed I could have forced them, in fact they came looking for me to force them,” said the PSC candidate, in an interview with Gemma Nierga, on the Cafè d’Idees program on Ràdio4. “Who came looking for him?” Nierga asked him. “Imagine it. And I didn’t do it,” Illa responds. The PP?, the journalist asks. “No, no, no, imagine it.” Together? Nierga asks. “Imagine it, if it’s easy, it’s easy,” says Illa. “In other words, Junts came looking for him to force elections,” Nierga states. And she is not denied by the socialist candidate, who adds: “If it is easy, it is easy, we have already seen it. And I didn’t do it. I decided, speaking with my colleagues in the parliamentary group and the party, that at that moment Catalonia came first.”
Illa recalled, in this sense, that the PSC supported the budgets of the Government of the Generalitat, which had just been in a minority and only had the support of the 33 ERC deputies. “We supported some budgets. It was difficult to negotiate, we set conditions, acceptable but taking into account parliamentary weights, but I have not gone to block. No one can say that the PSC has interfered. Now they don’t have to block me.”
In terms of the future, Illa has also referred to the double announcement he made in the TV3 electoral debate, this Tuesday night, that if he is president of the Generalitat he will propose the mayor of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, the socialist Núria Parlón , to be Minister of the Interior and that she would recover the major Josep Lluís Trapero as head of the Mossos d’Esquadra.
The socialist candidate has assured that the announcement of these two appointments is an example of the importance he gives to security policies. And he has praised Parlón’s work in the field of security, as mayor, who “has managed to reduce the crimes that most affect citizens by an average of 16% in 2023.” Regarding Trapero, he has insisted that she wants “good public servants.” “I want independent people. “I don’t want people in these responsibilities who are there because of their political affiliation, I want competent, professional people who know what they are doing,” he said. “I’m not looking to appoint someone who has a political affinity with me, I’m looking for someone with the capacity to lead the Catalan police,” she insisted. He has also explained that when she made the proposal to Trapero, he told her “that he was at the service of Catalonia and that he had no objection.” Illa has detailed that they had several meetings. ”I don’t like to force situations, I want people to see things clearly, we had a series of meetings. He told me that he was a public servant and that is what I want, public servants in different areas.”
To help the Catalan socialists in the final stretch of the campaign, the President of the Government and leader of the PSOE, Pedro Sánchez, will accompany Illa at the rallies on Thursday, in Vilanova i la Geltrú, and on Friday, in Barcelona, ??according to reports. in the campaign agenda that the PSC shared this Wednesday.
Already in a post-electoral key, Illa has not wanted to comment on possible pacts after 12-M. And he has not made clear his position in the face of an eventual majority of Junts and ERC that does not add up to enough to form an independence government. When asked if the PSC will abstain to avoid the blockade in case Junts and ERC add more than the socialist seats, Illa has limited himself to reminding that this is already the current situation. “We already have it, they have more deputies than me and it hasn’t worked,” he said.
He has been clearer when ruling out his support for an investiture of Carles Puigdemont: ”I will not give the investiture to Junts, we are incompatible. “I will take a step forward, I will introduce myself.” Illa has made it clear that we must wait first for the results of the elections, but anticipating a victory for the PSC, he asked himself “what will they do?”, in reference to ERC and Junts, and recalled that in the legislature that is now ending They did not let him run for office, since the president of the Parliament considered that he did not have enough support to try, despite having won the elections.
