The repeat of the elections has been described by Junts as “bad news” at all times, in public and in private, even before the vote. But this is not an obstacle for the training to foresee this possibility and, even, to prepare to deal with it. Even so, his priority is to try to exhaust the options of an investiture with the support of Esquerra, an operation that requires the abstention of the PSC and seems, for now, quite complex if not impossible.
In a meeting with JxCat elected officials from all the institutions, in Perpignan, Carles Puigdemont yesterday calmly analyzed the current picture, in which some elements are still missing, such as the correlation of forces that will emerge from the European elections on 9 June in Spain and Catalonia. “We will see what impact this has on Spanish politics as a whole”, said the former president. The composition must also include the pacts for the constitutive session, which will mark the path of future alliances and in a pre-electoral context will try to remain in the background.
In any case, the post-convergent leader asked his people not to leave aside their agenda of meetings with the economic sectors and associations with which they have been interviewed in recent months. In case there is repetition and in case this contributes to the “reflection process” that, in Puigdemont’s opinion, independence must start in order to regain harmony and unity.
So, the leader of Juntsva reiterated that the repetition “is a scenario that no one wants”. “It would be a luxury we cannot afford”, he stressed. “It is not our choice and it should not be our choice. It will not be our priority”, continued the former president, who then added that they are not afraid. “Having said that, we are not afraid. We are ready”, he finished.
In the meeting, in offices that the formation already used in the pre-campaign, Puigdemont made it clear that they will emulate the formula of the negotiations with the PSOE for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, in which he took the lead and went impose a media diet and forced silence on the entire party. Yesterday he prescribed “discretion” to his deputies. “We will try to negotiate in the style with which we negotiated with the Spanish Government, assuming the responsibility and gravity of the moment”, he pointed out. “We need the work to be discreet”, added the post-convergent leader.
The former president insisted on his road map to return to the Palau de la Generalitat, claimed his “legitimacy” and assured that they will exhaust all possibilities before throwing in the towel. “We will fight to the end with the options we have”, affirmed Puigdemont, who added that “there are options for a government with fairly solid parliamentary support”, despite the fact that, according to him, first “it must be prepared”.
For his plans to come to fruition, he must first restore the relationship with his former partner, ERC, and Puigdemont assured that he has already started contacts with them. “I have already started to make arrangements, discreet, that do not need to be disclosed”, he asserted.
In his public intervention, which preceded a meeting behind closed doors at the summit, he also spoke about the situation of ERC, which will hold a congress in November to renew the management and design its strategy, and now enters, in a decisive moment in which the future of the Catalan legislature is defined, in an interim phase. “There is an internal situation of who we want to be our partner that has not yet been clarified”, pointed out the post-convergent, who wanted to express his “greatest respect” for this process, just like the PSC, which is also trying to seduce the Left.
Puigdemont assures that his formation has options to form a “coherent government” and emphasized that the sum of independence is greater than that of the “progressive constitutionalist” forces, which is how he referred to the PSC and the commons , although in Junts they are aware that a tripartite is also possible if these two forces are joined by the republicans.
Faced with the criticism he receives for wanting to be invested after coming second on 12-M, the leader replied that “the PSOE lost the elections in a resounding manner”. “We do not allow ourselves to be told that our attempt has no legitimacy, even less from those who claim the legitimacy of their minority governments”, said Puigdemont. “Sánchez has a minority Government and to move things forward he must negotiate with the opposition. It is a game that democracy allows and whoever delegitimizes this game delegitimizes democracy”, he warned. For the time being, while the picture is not clear, the formation is gaining time without burning its cards.
