As is usual in recent years, with political fragmentation as a general framework, post-electoral pacts are protagonists even before the campaign starts. Especially since all the polls predict that none of the three forces that on paper are vying for first position – PSC, Junts and Esquerra – will have a sufficient majority to govern alone.
The vetoes that are now on the table and that the first secretary of the Catalan socialists, Salvador Illa, asks to lift, whom polls have placed in the lead for a long time and who already won in 2021, could lead Catalonia to a scenario of blockade and electoral repetition that no one rules out. Although it is premature to advance so many screens, the independence movement could not have a majority and the socialists, for their part, could be left without enough support for an alternative.
Illa avoided commenting yesterday on a possible pact with ERC or JxCat after the May 12 elections. On the other hand, he did make it clear that the only red line for forging alliances will be the “hate speeches” that he attributes to Vox and Aliança Catalana. After participating in a race, the former Health Minister also evaded the question and hid behind the fact that it is a “lack of respect for citizens” to evaluate agreements before voting.
In any case, both Junts and ERC promise that they will not give their votes to the PSC in an investiture debate, although in Esquerra there are those who have openly raised the possibility of articulating a tripartite again – with the socialists and the commoners. However, this issue has sparked debate and crossed statements in the republican formation between the former Congress representative Joan Tardà and the vice-minister and director of the presidential office of Pere Aragonès, Sergi Sabrià. For this reason, for some time now, after the 2023 budget agreement, JxCat has been raising the specter of the tripartite on a recurring basis and even more so now that there is an electoral struggle.
The post-convergents, in turn, try to polarize the campaign between Carles Puigdemont and Illa. At Junts they consider that in the elections that will be held in a month’s time it is possible that the technical tie between the two pro-independence forces from the last contests will be broken. In his public interventions, Puigdemont assures that if he becomes president again it will be with a pro-independence majority that supports him in the Parliament. For this reason, he has spoken of building bridges again with Esquerra and trying to improve a relationship that has been battered and complicated for several years.
In this regard, ERC spokesperson Raquel Sans complained yesterday that the former president spoke of “unity” in the campaign when the JxCat group did not support the Government’s budgets in March. So, for the moment, more than a rapprochement, what there is between the two former sovereigntist partners is a recurring exchange of reproaches, another ingredient that supports the prediction of the blockade and the electoral repetition.
Be that as it may, the fact that Junts says that it will not invest Illa does not mean that there cannot be agreements with the PSC at the sectoral level. “I only want to have a majority in the Parliament if it is pro-independence, I will not seek an agreement with the PSC,” Puigdemont said a few days ago. “Another thing is that we agree piece by piece and we want to talk to everyone, but the parliamentary majority has to rest on a clearly pro-independence project,” added the former president.
Likewise, the former president warned the socialists of the consequences that a maneuver similar to that of the Barcelona City Council would have in the Spanish legislature, with which Xavier Trias was deprived of the mayor’s office when the PSC added the support of the commons and the PP . “If they do, they will know. It would make very little sense for us to support the Government if its franchise in Catalonia tries to put a brake on the will of the Catalans,” Puigdemont warned.
