Convinced that there is a "sociovergent drive" that will lead Junts and PSC to "agree on everything" after the municipal elections, the ERC leader, Oriol Junqueras, has asked that the independence vote be concentrated in his party, especially in Barcelona and the metropolitan area, where the Republicans are the "vaccine" to prevent the PSC and PP from making Xavier Trias mayor.
In an interview with Efe a month before the May 28 elections, Junqueras demonstrated his confidence in his party's electoral prospects: "We are convinced that they will be very good, very very good results," he stated.
Emphasizing that ERC is the Catalan formation that will present the most municipal candidacies in the 28M (a total of 804, two more than four years ago), Junqueras has claimed his party as "the first municipalist force" in Catalonia. "And no party even comes close by chance," he added.
Despite this, he has warned of the danger of a "sociovergent drive", according to which PSC and Junts will try to "agree on everything everywhere". "Sociovergence is a temptation from which they hardly know how to get rid of, because for 44 years they have governed this country, dividing it up among one another," he added.
A distribution of power that Junqueras also believes could occur in Barcelona, despite being "convinced" that the Republican mayor, Ernest Maragall, is in a position to repeat his victory in 2019, when he was the most voted candidate although he ultimately failed govern.
For the leader of Esquerra, "it is evident that there are many media and diverse agents with a lot of power who have a lot of interest in having a socio-vergent government" in the Catalan capital. "But this alliance of powerful interests against change will not prevent us from winning in Barcelona", he has predicted.
Junqueras has made ugly the JxCat candidate for mayor, Xavier Trias, who has not ruled out being invested with the PP votes: "I am not going to go with the PP, but if you give them to me, I have never opposed them giving me things Trias said a week ago.
"It is a good moment to remind the group of Barcelonans that, if they do not want a mayor voted for by the PP, it is better that they vote for ERC", Junqueras asserted. "Surely there will be some voters in Barcelona who, after the elections, if they came to see that the mayor is decided by the PP votes, they would regret voting for what they might vote for."
Therefore, "so that they do not have to regret it", he added, "the best thing they can do is vote for ERC. The best vaccine to prevent the Barcelona mayor's office from being decided by the PSC and the PP is to vote for ERC" .
In the same sense, the former Catalan vice president and former mayor of Sant Vicenç dels Horts (Barcelona) has positioned his party as the only alternative that can put an end to the socialist governments that for four decades have been in charge of various municipalities in the Barcelona metropolitan area .
Localities that, he explained, "for 44 years have been governed by the same party that acts as if it were a regime, as if it owned those cities. Nothing would be as good for cities as L'Hospitalet, Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Sant Adrià or many others who had the opportunity to have a different government for the first time in decades".
But Junqueras recalled that "fortunately or unfortunately, the only pro-independence and republican party that has representation in the metropolitan area is ERC", for which he has made an "appeal to all pro-independence supporters" to vote for ERC to "not throw away your vote and not facilitate majorities that should be changed".
"It is mandatory to make this appeal to the whole of the independence movement. Only ERC is in a position to change those majorities that act as regimes," he concluded.
