Together, outside the Government. A new cycle is opening that does not go through calling elections. This has been assured by Pere Aragonès in an appearance late this Friday from the Gòtica gallery of the Palau de la Generalitat: "Citizens are not served by abandoning responsibilities and I will not abandon them in difficult times" like the current one, said the president in an ambivalent message, also addressed to Junts. And he has thrown another dart. This one is addressed to Laura Borràs, who minutes before had stated that “Together wins, Aragonès loses”: “It is about the country winning. (...). It's not about whether he loses this one or he loses that one."
Esquerra contemplated all the scenarios and shortly before JxCat announced the date of the consultation, the Republicans were already finalizing a plan to fill the positions that the post-convergent ministers will leave vacant. Aragonès has promised to do it "as quickly as possible". The militancy has finally resolved that its formation leave the Government, so ERC is left alone. Pere Aragonès has already taken the notebook with the names of the substitutes out of the drawer and it is likely that appointments will begin to take place this weekend.
In all probability the president of the Generalitat will restructure the Government. He will have to replace up to seven councilors of Junts - this Friday he has already received some formal resignations - and study whether he maintains any of the more than 180 high positions and trusts that depend on all of them. To these 180 must be added more than a hundred people in public companies dependent on the Generalitat and assigned to the departments left vacant by Junts: Vice Presidency, Digital Policies and Territory, Economy and Finance, Health, External Action and Open Government, Justice , Social Rights and Research and Universities.
The Govern ERC-Junts has lasted 500 days. As of today it will be monocolor and it's up to Esquerra alone to add days to the legislature's counter. A tour de force awaits. Despite the fact that in Esquerra they were almost certain that Junts would end up staying in the Govern, the voices within the party that were betting on sailing alone had been growing. In the formation led by Oriol Junqueras, the sensations of tiredness and fed up with respect to their even partners have dominated. In fact, the territorial assemblies months ago asked the leadership to loosen its complex. Fuentes de Esquerra were convinced of getting ahead: "You can't be happy when things get complicated." Others showed more caution. But in general they remain calm. "There will be no more stone on the road from now on than there have been up to now," a high-ranking party official stressed this Friday.
ERC already marked its profile a year ago, when after 83 days of negotiations with Junts, Aragonès hit the table and gave them up for broken to try the investiture alone. He repeated it, for example, before the indictment of the president of the postconvergents, Laura Borràs, when the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) indicted her for prevarication and false documentation: ERC favored suspending her as a deputy and, by extension, as President of Parliament. And he has reaffirmed it now, rejecting JxCat's proposals to keep the coalition standing.
The latter has been the riskiest bet. He has kept the pulse, but now it is up to him to support a Government with only the assured reinforcement of 33 deputies in the Parliament draws a more than complicated panorama. It is the lowest support for a Catalan Executive in its entire history. Aragonès is forced to apply variable geometry if he wants, for example, to approve the 2023 budgets, which the Minister of Economy, Jaume Giró, was preparing until today. Giró, a member of JxCat, will leave the Government. Whoever relieves him will have half a job done, but he will have to seek alliances beyond the common ones if he wants to carry out the accounts. The Salvador Illa PSC has reiterated, even before the result of the vote is known, that it is willing to negotiate, for example, the budgets. Pedro Sánchez has also guaranteed "stability" to Aragonès. However, the Catalan socialists and En Comú Podem assured that they would not opt for positions in the Catalan Executive. Illa's decision seems firm. The common one, not so much.
However, ERC is going to have problems. It is not convenient for him to go hand in hand with the PSC if one takes into account that municipal elections will be held in May next year and the Republicans consider the Socialists their main rivals, especially in the Barcelona metropolitan area, where Oriol Junqueras's They have managed to penetrate PSC strongholds with notable success, in addition to snatching mayoralties as important as those of Tarragona and Lleida.
