It is known that the words spoken by the candidates in the campaign are swept away by the first gale that breaks out, with the results in hand, the day after an election. In the case of these Catalan women, the forecast of serious difficulties in building majorities from the 13th – difficulties which, taken to the extreme, could force a repeat election – is causing these days to be talked about as much or more possible pacts to govern Catalonia in the coming years than imaginative solutions to solve the serious problems facing the country and which are the basis of its own political instability. The with whom goes before the what, the why and the how. For this reason, the smallest proposal that comes off the script, like the one launched yesterday by the candidate of the PSC, Salvador Illa, expressing the will to “lead a transversal government”, is able to lead all the rivals to draw red lines apparently very marked In short, nowadays the one without you usually sells more than the one with you.
Illa, whom the polls continue to give as the favorite to win the elections, took a new step in the projection of his image of a dialogue politician who offers himself as an undertaker of the stridences of Catalan politics of the last decade. He is postulating as the leader of “a transversal government that is supported by a very transversal majority”. His governing formula only excludes Vox and Aliança Catalana on paper. No one else, not even Together. “We, together with Junts, have collaborated in other institutions and we will see what option they take”, said the candidate for the presidency of the PSC, not without warning that this option would lose almost all meaning if Puigdemont “maintains independence as his first priority of Catalonia”.
Junts’ candidate needed time to unwrap himself from the pressure and redirect it towards ERC. After assuring that his votes, with all certainty, will not contribute to investing the leader of the PSC as president, Carles Puigdemont passed the ball to the head of the list of Esquerra, Pere Aragonès. “I would like to know with the same force and clarity that no ERC vote will be used to make Salvador Illa president”, pointed out the pro-independence leader.
Puigdemont knows that his chances of regaining the presidency of Catalonia depend on mending old bridges with Esquerra, which once suffered from all kinds of pathologies, and because of the need for the republicans not to fall into the temptation of re-editing another old formula, that of the left-wing tripartite with socialists and commoners.
At the moment, Aragonès is trying to isolate himself from the noise of the post-electoral pacts so as not to incentivize his potential voters to vote for Junts or the PSC. He prefers to focus the debate on his management at the head of the presidency of the Generalitat, even if it presents black holes in areas such as education, security or the response to the drought situation. Yesterday, the ERC candidate for re-election referred to pacts, but of a different kind, a “national pact” – once again, as in the case of Illa, transversality – to speed up and reduce bureaucracy to the Catalan administration.
The commons, for their part, have seen Salvador Illa’s proposal as a float to cling to in order to prevent a hypothetical rise in the socialist tide from taking them away. The Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, pulled out the book of anti-convergence spells to warn left-wing voters that voting for the PSC could pave the way for Puigdemont to regain the presidency of the Generalitat. In other words, according to Urtasun, it is “opening the door to an agreement with those who do not want fair taxation and do not want to face the problem of housing, the heirs of the cuts and Pujolism”.
Salvador Illa’s words did not go unnoticed by the Popular Party, which in the socialist candidate’s bid for “transversality” wanted to see the threat of a social vergence 4.0 very different – due to the presence of the pro-independence factor – from that which never came to materialize in the times of Pujolism and in the years that preceded the process. In Sant Joan Despí, where one of the barons of the PP allied with Vox moved to help in the campaign, the president of Castile and Leon, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, the candidate of the conservative party accused the socialists of having “resurrected the process” . “Illa has revealed himself and conveyed his intention to reach an agreement with Puigdemont to govern Catalonia”, said Alejandro Fernández. “They won’t find us there, if they don’t count on us for an operation of these characteristics”, he added. It should be remembered that a week ago, in the first candidate debate of these elections, organized by La Vanguardia and RAC 1, Illa ruled out doing a Collboni, that is, getting the presidency thanks to the votes of the PP.
Nor is Ciutadans, if it obtains representation, ready to enter the Island game. Candidate Carles Carrizosa said that the Socialists’ “lack of scruples” could lead them to make Puigdemont president to keep Pedro Sánchez in Moncloa. And, even if Illa does not count at all, Vox’s votes will in no way strengthen a government chaired by the PSC. This was confirmed by Ignacio Garriga, who assured that he would not even facilitate a non-independence government led by the Socialists. Before, an electoral repeat.
