Next Sunday, May 12, Catalans will exercise their right to vote in the elections to the Parliament of Catalonia to decide who will be the next president of the Generalitat. Although it was not included in his forecasts, the veto of the Generalitat’s 2024 budget forced the president, Pere Aragonès, to call early elections.
The announcement occurred in mid-March, and since then the political parties have been announcing their top lists, their candidacies and their programs. Of the heads of the list, six repeat as such with respect to 2021 (Salvador Illa, Pere Aragonès, Ignacio Garriga, Carlos Carrizosa, Jéssica Albiach and Alejandro Fernández) while Carles Puigdemont was in 2017 and Laia Estrada is new in these matters.
Salvador Illa is a calm politician, not a fan of stridency. He defines himself as “predictable” and shows signs of it. Graduated in philosophy from the UB, he began his political career in 1995 in his hometown, of which he was mayor for 10 years. He was then linked to the Generalitat of José Montilla as general director of Infrastructure Management of the Department of Justice (until 2009) and then made the leap to Barcelona City Council. First with party positions, in the socialist parliamentary group and as chief of staff of Jaume Collboni, and then, in the municipal government, as manager of Business, Culture and Innovation of the Consistory.
Illa became the first secretary of the PSC in December 2022, after having won the Catalan elections of 14-F 2021 by a narrow margin of 5,000 votes for ERC, a result that was insufficient for him to govern. Illa landed in Catalonia after a round trip. While he held the organizational secretary of the PSC under Miquel Iceta, he was appointed by Pedro Sánchez to take charge of the Ministry of Health. “You will do well,” the president encouraged him, not knowing that he would have to deal with the biggest health crisis in a century, the covid pandemic. His good management made Iceta propose to Sánchez to rescue him for the Catalan elections in his place and the president accepted. Illa won but was relegated to the opposition against a government of ERC and Junts that collapsed after a year, and the socialist has been in charge of highlighting the weakness of Pere Aragonès’ Executive while delving into the bankruptcy of the independence bloc through pacts with both parties. In March of this year he revalidated his leadership at the head of the PSC.
Pere Aragonès was the person that Oriol Junqueras chose to command the change in ERC’s strategy after the unilateralism of 2017. The president of the party considered that due to his disposition he was the best suited to do so. Naming him as the new strong man of the party, in a way Junqueras returned Aragonès’s gesture in 2009, which encouraged him to enter politics and present himself as an Esquerra candidate in the European elections.
Aragonès is the youngest president of the Generalitat. He has combined it with the leadership of the first single-color Government and, at the same time, with the least parliamentary support in history. Only the 33 ERC deputies have shown their support permanently. His administration has had to deal with the pandemic, the inflation caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the drought.
Of an introverted nature, an Esquerra activist since 2000 and married with a daughter, before serving as president, Aragonès was Secretary of Economy from 2016 to 2018, working the first two years under Junqueras. With Quim Torra in Palau, the Republican was named vice president and Minister of Economy. With Torra disqualified by court order in September 2020, Aragonès called elections for February 2021.
The Junts candidate is one of those who needs no introduction, since in recent years he has monopolized the media spotlight and in all the polls he is one of those with the highest degree of knowledge among the population. Born in 1962 in Amer (Girona), in a large family that ran a pastry shop in that town, he was a journalist, mayor of Girona and deputy of the Parliament before becoming president of the Generalitat. He was inaugurated on the horn in January 2016, at a time when everyone assumed that there would be a repeat election. In October 2017, when the independence referendum declared illegal by the Constitutional Court was held, he was the Catalan president.
At the end of October 2017, after the approval of article 155 of the Constitution, which dissolved the Parliament and intervened in the Catalan self-government by the Moncloa, the former president expatriated to Belgium, to Waterloo, and for a few weeks he has established his residence in the south of France, in the northern Catalan region of Vallespir with an eye on the 12-M elections. In 2019 he was a Junts candidate in the European elections and has been an MEP, although he was not able to access the institution until the end of 2019. The European Parliament act has granted him immunity these years and has allowed him to move throughout Europe without problems despite the European orders, although he was detained in Italy for a few hours. The Spanish justice system has tried to repatriate him without success since 2017, with several attempts by the investigating magistrate of the Supreme Court Pablo Llarena, who in 2018, when he had him within reach after an arrest in Germany, withdrew the extradition request. as delivery was denied for the crime of rebellion or sedition and only German judges endorsed the crime of embezzlement. In a few weeks he will be one of the beneficiaries of the amnesty, although he is also being investigated in the Tsunami Democràtic case for an alleged crime of terrorism with a more uncertain outcome than the cause of the process.
Married and father of two daughters, he was a member of Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya from 1983 until he closed his doors in 2016, an event that occurred when he was president of the Generalitat. He then joined the PDECat and in the summer of 2020, after disagreements with the leadership of the party that inherited CDC, he founded Junts per Catalunya, the party with which he is now running for the 12-M electoral race and the main post-convergent brand without room for doubt. He was president of the party that he founded until June 2022, but his figure has always been behind all the movements of an organization in which he acts as a link between various sectors and of which he is the factual leader. Although he does not have organic positions, since the summer he assumed the reins of the negotiation with the PSOE for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez and has always led the way. In these years in which he has been expatriated, Puigdemont has lost both his father, in November 2019, and his mother, just a few days ago. He said goodbye to both of them via videoconference and had to continue the funerals that way. He has promised that he will return to Catalonia for the first investiture debate, with the amnesty law already applied, on June 25 at the latest.
Ignacio Garriga is one of the trusted men of the leader of his party, Santiago Abascal, since he was appointed general secretary of Vox to replace Javier Ortega Smith. His political career began in the ranks of the Popular Party, where he joined in 2005. After the defeat of Montserrat Nebrera against Alicia Sánchez-Camacho for the leadership of the PPC and the change of opinion of the Popular Party on issues such as homosexual marriage or abortion, Garriga left the party and later ran for election to the Parliament of Catalonia in 2010 as number 18 of the Govern Alternative party (led by Nebrera), without winning a seat. Four years later he began his career at Vox.
In the far-right party, Garriga was a deputy in Congress after being head of the Vox list for Barcelona in the 2019 general elections. Subsequently, he was designated a candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat in the last Catalan elections of 2021, where he won 11 seats. and be the fourth political force. In January of this year, Garriga became sole vice president of Vox while maintaining his position as general secretary.
Graduated in Dentistry, his family has Catalan, Flemish and African origins. Garriga’s attitude is that of an ultra-conservative Catholic – he defines himself as a “Christian humanist”, and his speech is based on “stopping” the independence movement and illegal immigration.
It is the first time that the CUP chooses between two lists already configured, with all their names in their positions on the list, to designate its representatives in the Parliamentary elections. The militancy ended up voting for the one led by Laia Estrada (Tarragona, 1982), which prevailed over the one led by Laure Vega. She served as a councilor in the Tarragona city council from 2015 to 2021 from where she uncovered the Inipro corruption case, which implicated the then mayor of the PSC Fèlix Ballesteros.
In 2021 she entered as a member of Parliament. Estrada then headed the list of his province and participated in a television debate during the electoral campaign, where he showed his discursive ability and firm convictions. He is a member of Endavant, one of the groups that has always been related to the CUP, and considers himself “very pro-independence.” . During the previous legislature she was inflexible with any progress that the Hard Rock recreational complex, planned between Vila-seca and Salou, might have.
In July 2021, the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) filed a complaint against Estrada for public disorder and disobedience. A reason for which the woman from Cupera always expressed that she was accused of just “moving a fence” to join a demonstration called against the holding of a Council of Ministers in Barcelona, ??in December 2018.
Born on May 29, 1979 in Valencia, Jéssica Albiach is the candidate for Comunes Sumar. She has been a deputy since 2015, she is in the 12-M and she faces her second election as the headliner of a political space that she has been mutating. She has always known how to protect herself from internal tides until she established herself as the visible face of the commons in parliamentary politics.
Precisely, Albiach comes from a party that is no longer part of the candidacy, Podem, which he joined in 2014. He left the purple party on the same day that the divorce with Sumar was confirmed. His political awakening already occurred in Barcelona, ??during the 15-M mobilizations.
He traveled to the Catalan capital to study for a master’s degree and stayed there.
Lover of baked rice and turtles, he studied journalism and photography. He worked for some media and communication offices, such as the Cornellà de Llobregat City Council, a socialist fiefdom par excellence, before making the leap into politics. Previously, she also worked as a waitress, distributed advertising and helped her mother’s business, a frame workshop.
Carlos Carrizosa entered politics as one of the founders of Ciutadans in 2006 and a year later he was a member of the party’s executive committee. During Albert Rivera’s time as leader of Ciutadans, Carrizosa was always a person Rivera trusted completely, and later he was also a person of Inés Arrimadas when the former politician made the leap to Congress.
Throughout his career, Carrizosa has been characterized as a firm opponent of the independence parties. He entered the Parliament as a deputy in 2012, and in 2019 he became head of the opposition of the Governments of Quim Torra and Pere Aragonès. When Arrimadas left for Madrid, Carrizosa became the head of the Ciutadans list in Catalonia in the 2021 elections, in which his party lost 30 seats.
Carrizosa was born in the Les Corts neighborhood of Barcelona, ??and practiced as a lawyer for 23 years until he left his occupation to become a deputy. He now has the task of ensuring that his party does not disappear from the Catalan political scene.
Alejandro Fernández has a long membership in the Popular Party, where he joined Nuevas Generaciones in 1994 and since 2018 he has been president of this party in Catalonia. Born to Asturian parents, and the father of three daughters, the politician from Tarragona is running for the second time as a candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat. He has been deputy mayor of the Tarragona City Council on two occasions (2004-2007) and in 2016, a deputy in Congress and in 2015 he entered Parliament.
Graduated in Political Science (UAB) and master’s degree in Political Communication (UAB), he worked as a professor of public policy analysis (URV) and in the master’s degree in labor law (UAB). He came to Parliament in 2015, as a candidate in the Tarragona constituency, and in 2016 he was appointed spokesperson for the Popular group, replacing Enric Millo.
With a liberal-conservative ideology, Alejandro Fernández has Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as political references. Lover of rock and grunge, Barcelona fan and admirer of Laudrup, the PP candidate will try to multiply the only three deputies that he obtained in 2021.
