All forecasts foresee a complex post-electoral scenario in Catalonia, with fragmentation of the vote and the possibility of blocking and even repeating the elections in the fall. But the Junts candidate, Carles Puigdemont, who if there is a repeat election he will run again, hopes to be inaugurated in the second vote, with more votes in favor than against, although the independence movement does not have an absolute majority. This is how the former Catalan president spoke this Thursday at a press conference in Argelers organized by the Agència Catalana de Notícies, in which he reiterated that his intention is to reach an agreement with the rest of the pro-independence forces and that the votes of JxCat will not facilitate the investiture of Salvador Illa, PSC candidate.
In the event that there is no absolute majority for the independence movement, Puigdemont maintains that he is the candidate with the best chance of being inaugurated in the second vote taking into account the political context and has expressed again today that the PSC "will know what to do" if necessary, if a handful of votes are missing for the investiture. “I will not go to negotiate with them. But the PSC will know what it has to do and assume the consequences of its decisions, whatever they may be. They will all be legitimate, but they all have consequences. The question is what the PSC will do in that context,” said the post-convergent candidate.
If the independence movement does not gain an absolute majority, the participation of another group that abstains is necessary and Junts have hinted several times in recent weeks that the Catalan socialists could abstain if necessary, taking into account that JxCat has seven key votes in Madrid, in the Congress of Deputies.
Likewise, Puigdemont has stressed that in no case will Junts' votes serve to make Salvador Illa, the socialist candidate, president of the Generalitat and has demanded that same clarity from his former partner, Esquerra Republicana, after having warned in recent hours of the possibility of there being a tripartite and “an alliance of the Catalan and Spanish left.” “We are explicit. “We would like others to be as good as we are,” he said.
After Illa has shown himself willing to talk to everyone and also to Puigdemont after the Parliament elections on May 12, in an interview on Cadena Ser, the former president has replied that “his credibility is zero” and has made allusion to the Barcelona pact of the socialists with the commons and the PP in Barcelona in June of last year. “It is curious that a person comes who has not wanted to know anything about me. The last time he told us to be calm was the day before his people made a pact with the PP to prevent Xavier Trias from being mayor of Barcelona, therefore the credibility we deserve is zero," noted the independence leader, who He assures that the PSC "has closed an agreement with the people of the commons and will, I suppose, count on Esquerra Republicana to make an agreement for the Spanish and Catalan left."
On the other hand, Puigdemont has confirmed that he will be present at the first investiture debate in the Parliament of Catalonia, which must be held on June 25 at the latest. “I will be present in the investiture debate in any of the circumstances, I have to defend my position in any of the circumstances,” said the post-convergent leader.
In another vein, Puigdemont has thanked the support expressed for his candidacy by former presidents Jordi Pujol and Artur Mas, of whom he has said he feels honored and has clearly vindicated the legacy of Convergència and the party that Pujol founded.
“I was a member of Convergència since 1983 and I did not leave until the PDECat was created. I feel very represented by what Convergència did for Catalunya. I remember where we came from and what the Pujol governments did to lift the country and give national character to the policies, some of them pioneering, such as equality of people, the environment, the health model, the linguistic immersion model and asking for the transfer of prisons or traffic powers, the abolition of the figure of civil governors...", the former president detailed. “I feel represented by that policy that raised Catalonia and brought it out of the darkness of Francoism,” he added. In addition, he has made a point to especially thank the support of Mas, who in 2021 supported the candidacy of the PDECat, which faced JxCat.
Asked about Esquerra's attacks on Junts due to the cuts by Artur Mas' governments, Puigdemont said that they have become "a never-ending story" and was ironic when he said that they have been reversing these cuts for many years. But beyond that, he recalled that the ideologue of the cuts, the then councilor Andreu Mas-Colell now supports Esquerra.
Puigdemont was referring to the informative breakfast on April 17 starring President Pere Aragonès in which Mas-Colell introduced him and praised him for his character.
