Junts is committed to “structuring” an alternative to the PSC in the Barcelona Provincial Council with other political formations. The spokesman and vice president of the party, Josep Rius, has assured that they will maintain contact with the rest of the formations – with Esquerra Republicana and Tot per Terrassa – in the coming days with discretion.
“We want to structure a larger majority with other political forces than the one that the PSC has”, highlighted the leader of JxCat. “It is a bet consistent with what we have done up to now”, Rius pointed out. “We feel very comfortable in this consistency,” he insisted.
The formation maintained an open debate on whether it was convenient to agree with the PSC or not in the supra-municipal entity, the third public administration of Catalonia in budget. Both formations governed together in the previous term. The party executive met this morning to address the matter, although she had been studying what to do for days and he had not been gaining weight, especially after Jaume Collboni’s maneuver in the Barcelona City Council to remove Xavier Trias from the mayor’s office on the horn.
The formation, in any case, has not made a clear statement on whether the option of seeking an alternative implies closing the door definitively to a pact with the PSC in the future if that alternative entente does not crystallize.
The incidence of the council, with a budget of more than 1,200 million, is relevant above all outside Barcelona and the metropolitan area of ??the Catalan capital, in small towns where there are not enough financial resources. For this reason, some local leaders of Junts, such as the mayor of Igualada, Marc Castells, although he does not have a party card, have tried to influence the decision and have an agreement with the Catalan socialists, who at all times have stated that their option preferred was to repeat the pact with JxCat. The local cadres have pressed for an agreement, especially after being left out of the Lleida and Tarragona councils. But the party leadership chooses not to agree with them and try to lead the supramunicipal jan with another artimetics, although there is a risk that it will not come out.
Despite the fact that Junts, for now, slams the socialists, those of Salvador Illa can reissue the Barcelona formula and unite the support of the commons and PP to head the supra-municipal entity. For this, Lluisa Moret, mayoress of Sant Boi de Llobregat and deputy secretary of organization, in charge of the party’s municipal policy, appears in the pools. ERC, for its part, already indicated last week that in no case would it support the Catalan socialists.
The PSC movement in Barcelona has disrupted any option to repeat the socio-vergent pact, which already had detractors even before Trias was left in the opposition in the Catalan capital. Before June 17, when the Barcelona City Council was established and Collboni was proclaimed mayor, it was noted that the pact with the Socialists was “almost on track.” After that, even in the most pragmatic and institutional sector of training, there were those who advocated not agreeing.
Trias, however, did speak out in favor of agreeing with the PSC just a few hours after running out of the mayoralty. “Just because I’m angry and outraged doesn’t mean we’re not smart in life,” he said.
