The calendar has begun to count down the days left for the Catalan elections on May 12. He president Pere Aragonès officially signed the decree calling the elections this Monday and each party takes positions for the electoral fight. At the start, Junts per Catalunya has managed to attract attention with an advertisement by its leader, Carles Puigdemont, which says little but hints at a lot. The former president, who left for Belgium in 2017 to avoid being tried, has organized a conference for this Thursday in Elna, southern France, where he undertakes to reveal his political plans. “We went into exile for the same reasons we are going to return; The future of our nation and not our personal destiny has inspired all the decisions,” Puigdemont said in a writing on his usual communication channel, the social network X (formerly Twitter). The details that Puigdemont reserves for his public event on Thursday are addressed with less caution by Junts per Catalunya. The party, from all possible fronts, repeats that the former president is the preferred one to be the headliner of the formation. With a poorly defined political strategy, without a clear program, halfway between reclaiming the legacy of the old Convergència or denying all that past, overcoming a host of internal doubts about how to manage the role of Laura Borràs, president of the formation and with a judicial conviction for cutting up public contracts, the party chooses to bet everything on the figure of Puigdemont.
Junts defines itself as an unusual party. Its leaders point out that having been born under the influence of the October 1 referendum gives the formation its own identity and a way of functioning that often escapes the traditional logic of political parties. On occasion, Laura Borràs has referred to surveys by the CEO (the Catalan CIS) to emphasize that Junts’ electorate is further to the left than that of the PSC. After the last municipal elections, Borràs herself opposed the possibility of isolating the far-right force Aliança Catalana to prevent it from governing in the Ripoll City Council (Girona). Junts ended up distancing itself from a pact between ERC, PSC and the CUP and the mayor’s office ended up in the power of Aliança Catalana, a party that now aspires to compete in parliamentary politics.
Puigdemont’s party puts immigration control at the focus of its agenda and claims to have closed with the Government a transfer of powers to Catalonia in this matter. In the field of security, home occupations are a recurring theme in their demands. During the negotiation for the Catalan budgets, the JxCat deputies have asked the Government to create a specialized group in the Mossos d’Esquadra to combat the occupation of homes. The lawsuit was unsuccessful, nor was the request for the Government to agree to eliminate the inheritance tax. Esquerra alleged that giving up on inheritances represents a loss of about 1,000 million euros for the public coffers. In 2019, when Junts ruled the Generalitat with Quim Torra, the then president He defended an increase in personal income tax and inheritance tax.
To display identity within the independence movement and take advantage of ERC, Junts has made it a priority to distance itself from the PSC. Jordi Turull assures that under no circumstances will he bless a pact with Salvador Illa. It is not new. Laura Borràs was the Junts candidate in the 2021 elections. “I will not accept the votes of 155″, she said then. In the meantime, the leader of the party, Carles Puigdemont, has opened negotiations with the PSOE and has supported the investiture of Pedro Sánchez.
“The red thread that has marked my political commitment has remained indelible despite the adversities that I have had to confront for eight years, especially hard for six and a half years,” Puigdemont reasons in the note he published this Monday. He thus highlights the supposed political commitment that he acquired when taking office as president, in January 2016, and the adventures he has faced since, in October 2017, he left for Belgium to avoid being tried. “I want to talk about all this more this Thursday in Elna, in a conference open to everyone,” Puigdemont emphasizes.
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