PDECat, the successor formation of Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC), registered last week the political brand "Espai CiU", which refers to the old federation between CDC and Unió Democràtica de Catalunya (UDC), Convergència i Unió. A space that led Catalan politics for more than 20 years, between 1980 and 2003.
The initials were registered in the register of political formations of the Ministry of the Interior on Tuesday of last week, according to Efe, and the party's headquarters are at number 441 on Avinguda Diagonal in Barcelona.
The president of the party is Mateu Comalrena de Sobregrau Esteve, who is the mayor of Gallifa (Vallàs Occidental) and, for just over a year, a member of the PDECat management.
On Saturday, in an interview with La Vanguardia, the president of the PDECat, David Bonvehí, reflected on the new Catalan political scene, with the breakdown of the Government, and advocated recovering the legacy of Convergència without taboos and without complexes. “Between all of us we have to dare to promote a new Convergència”, affirmed the leader.
In addition to betting on taking that step forward after a few years in which several actors from the CDC have tried to avoid links with the old brand due to corruption, the leader questioned the more institutional and pragmatic cadres who are in Junts per Catalunya, dissatisfied with the current panorama, after the formation left the Govern de la Generalitat following the designs of the militancy.
Several leaders of the PDECat, such as Marc Solsona and Genís Boadella, have spoken these days of recovering the "CiU space", in the same sense as Bonvehí. The registration corresponds to the will to protect the brand and prevent others from using it. "For now there is nothing else," say sources consulted.
The rupture of the coalition of the Catalan Executive has been read as an opportunity by the PDECat, which feared being cornered if JxCat occupied the centrality of the political board, as it seemed it was going to do in the congress it held in the summer.
The logo of Espai CiU recovers part of the symbology of the old Convergència i Unió, like a sphere above the logo with a marked 'flag', as well as orange and dark blue, the two colors of the federation.
Since the CDC lowered the blind in 2016, stalked by corruption cases, several brands have emerged on the Catalan board that have developed on the same political spectrum with different sensitivities and peculiarities. The main one was the PDECat, which is now committed to recovering the convergent nomenclature without hesitation. Other spaces, along with the PDECat, had been grouped at the beginning of the year under the umbrella of Centrem, but the integration did not go well and its leader, Àngels Chacón, left the project in the summer fed up with "internal struggles" and the formation opted for enter a phase of low activity until after the municipal elections.
In addition to the PDECat, Centrem included cadres from the Lliga Democràtica, Convergents and Lliures. Marta Pascal's Nationalist Party of Catalonia (PNC), which had initially participated in the talks, was left out. The heirs of Unió, Units per Avançar, have been in contact at all times with these formations but remain in coalition with the PSC.
The PDECat, however, ceased to be the main formation if its incidence and political weight are taken into account, in 2020, when most of its leaders left the party to enlist in Junts per Catalunya, with Carles Puigdemont at the head . JxCat had been a brand used by the PDECat in 2017 in the 21-D elections, in which many independents who are now part of Junts signed up.
The so-called CiU space that post-convergents talk about aims to bring together the brands that participated in the formation of Centrem and the other actors who make the CDC legacy their own. "At CDC some things were not done well, but we have to recover our values and roots," Bonvehí stated in his interview.
