Pere Aragonès was clear about the call for elections on Sunday. Five days before he had already started to cross the idea through his head. Jéssica Albiach's harsh tone in his public interventions over the weekend completely convinced the president that there was little to do with the budget project. On Monday he called Yolanda Díaz. A call that was more of a courtesy than anything else. Yesterday morning she met with the ERC management: “Be prepared for any scenario,” she warned.
The final scenario has been, effectively, that of a call for elections to the Parliament, announced from the Gothic gallery of the Palau de la Generalitat, which triggers a shift in the Catalan political scene and which catches part of the opposition off guard and forces it to tune the instruments and get ready soon. The elections do not wait. It's two months from now, Sunday, May 12.
The Spanish political board has also been altered: Pedro Sánchez renounced presenting budgets to Congress. He does not see them as feasible with the Catalan electoral contest involved.
The president had always been in favor of exhausting the legislature until February 2025. Even in ERC they considered pushing forward at least until autumn of this year in case of having to govern with the 2023 accounts extended. But Republicans now believe that the context for May is favorable to them. That and the fact that the internal polls give results similar to those of the last parliamentary elections, have ended up tipping the balance towards electoral advancement.
Whether because there are parties that have external factors that affect them or because they are not yet prepared internally, the Republicans have seen an opportunity in the early elections. The Koldo case wears down the PSC and its leader, Salvador Illa, as well as the Amnesty law, according to Esquerra's internal polls.
Likewise, ERC believes that it can catch Junts, one of its biggest rivals, who still does not have a candidate for the Parliament elections. The question of whether Carles Puigdemont is still present. The former president has not clarified whether he will run, although Junts asks him to be the candidate. In turn, the Republicans believe that the possible emergence of the xenophobic Aliança Catalana, the ANC civic list and the project of former councilor Clara Ponsatí with the philosopher Jordi Graupera will take away votes from the post-convergents.
In the CUP the panorama is also complex. The anti-capitalists began a refoundation process last year that they do not plan to finish until June. Finally, the PP aspires to gain a large part of the Ciudadanos electorate and fight with Vox.
However, the Government makes it clear that Aragonès would not have called elections if the processing of the budgets had been approved yesterday. Therefore, they do not accept the accusations of “electoralism” leveled at him by the general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull. “Albert Batet asked in the morning to call elections...”, Aragonès countered yesterday.
Be that as it may, the faces of the Esquerra deputies yesterday in Parliament did not reflect any seriousness. The blockade was assumed and the buzz of the electoral call was around.
Nor did Aragonès seem affected during his institutional appearance from Palau, although it is true that he took advantage of it to attack the parliamentary groups opposed to the budgets, especially against the Commons and Junts per Catalunya.
“The red lines and the blockade between one another have meant that the budget with the most resources in the history of Catalonia has been rejected,” the president complained. Also, of the “crossed vetoes.” Immediately afterwards, he called them all “irresponsible.”
