Aragonès takes the pulse of a single-color mandate of uncertain duration

There are no long faces in Esquerra.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
08 October 2022 Saturday 23:31
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Aragonès takes the pulse of a single-color mandate of uncertain duration

There are no long faces in Esquerra. Neither in private nor in public. It is not that there is euphoria or they are laughing. The Republicans were asked by the body that Junts leave; head, let them stay. But once they learned the results of the consultation with the Junts militancy, Pere Aragonès and ERC decided to face it "as an opportunity". About what? To act fully on their own after being linked to CiU, CDC, PDECat or Junts since 2012, and do their own thing. They got rid of them without you having to push or push them (actively, at the very least).

Now ERC is trying to remake the Government. There are seven Junts councilors who are leaving their positions and a whole organizational chart below in the form of a tree that also needs to be redone, with some possible merger of ministries on the table. Vice-presidencies, Digital Policies and Territory, Economy and Finance, Health, External Action and Open Government, Justice, Social Rights, and Research and Universities are vacant.

"The puzzle does not fit yet," admitted sources from the Government. They got down to work from the very moment that Junts announced that we have come this far. “We needed to clarify the situation. Once it was clarified, we said to ourselves: let's do it”, they affirm from Palau. "There is work", they summarize when asked what the atmosphere is between the four walls. But probably the new configuration will be more a matter of days than hours. The Republicans are looking for independent profiles and among civil society to complete the list. From the training they point out that "you have to be generous".

ERC dances alone. It has a complicated situation to assert itself with only 33 deputies in the Parliament. He has a good part of the independence movement –JxCat, the CUP, the ANC– against and calling for Aragonès to call elections or submit to a matter of confidence. With these nuances and also taking into account that ERC closes the band and says that it does not want to know anything about support from the PSC, the future of the mandate is uncertain.

But yesterday, the gesture of Oriol Junqueras and his press conference were far from being a funeral. He took Otto von Bismarck out for a walk and spoke of the times he approved military budgets for a period of seven years to show himself convinced that Esquerra will pull through whatever happens, whether he has new accounts for 2023 or not. No elections or trust issues. But the president of the ERC, as almost always, in the midst of so many praises for his own, subordinate phrases and roundups in responses to journalists, it was difficult for him to be clear and direct, no matter how much he insisted that he was. When he is not satisfied he does the opposite and expresses himself bluntly.

In that same thing, in approving the accounts, is Aragonès. In that and in the renewal of the Government. The head of the Catalan Executive and ERC want to pilot the Government without a co-pilot, but at the same time without this implying ending up alone like an oyster. To avoid this, it seeks to strengthen alliances with the commons. Judging by what the Minister of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrà, said yesterday, Esquerra does not intend for them to enter the Palau de la Generalitat, but to establish a pact, or at least a commitment, to obtain their support from the Parliament. “The responsibility of articulating this stable parliamentary progressive majority belongs to President Aragonès”, Jéssica Albiach, leader of the commons in the Catalan Chamber, said yesterday, as if she had picked up Vilagrà's glove.

Aragonés, Vilagrà and their closest team met yesterday. Morning and afternoon. "The president has been meeting and making phone calls all day, also with economic and social agents," reported the press office of the head of the Government.

"Together is history for us", they affirmed yesterday from Calle Calàbria, where the ERC headquarters are located. Slate and new account. It was very significant to see that just 21 hours after the postconvergents announced their goodbye, Junqueras was tougher on the PSC than on JxCat.

It was on account of the budget of the Generalitat. He closed the doors to new pacts with the PSC, although Salvador Illa reaches out to them day after day. “It is evident that the PSC is not committed to ending the repression, at least to the extent that it continues to endorse a large part of the repression that still exists,” stressed the leader of the Republicans.

Junqueras was even tougher and clearer immediately afterwards. He assured that they will sit down to negotiate only with those who are "committed to the end of the repression and to the fullness of the democratic exercise", that is, a self-determination referendum. "Many leaders of the PSC reddened their hands applauding our imprisonment," he stressed.

However, Junts did not come out unscathed from Junqueras' criticism. “If one day there are possible parliamentary majorities, because those who have prepared the budgets [Junts and the Conselleria d’Economia] are willing to vote for them, then there will be budgets; and if there are no possible budget majorities because those who have drawn them up now do not want to vote for them, (...) there is a scenario called an extension”.

Here the ghost of Bismarck appeared at the press conference. in the mouth of Junqueras. At ERC they are willing to let the current budgets be extended if necessary.