Carles Puigdemont will announce this Thursday if he will finally be the Junts candidate for the Catalan elections of 12-M, speeding up the deadlines of his party's internal regulations that mark precisely the 21st as the last day to present a candidacy. He will do so in an event at 7:00 p.m. at the town hall of Elna, in Catalonia del Nord, accompanied by the party's senior staff, as reported this morning by El món to RAC1 and confirmed by La Vanguardia.
Puigdemont himself has referred to next Thursday's event in a message on the social network X in which he has fueled the idea of his return. "We went into exile for the same reasons why we must return; the future of our nation and not our personal destiny has inspired all the decisions made," he assured. "And that's how it should continue to be until the end," he added. "I want to talk about all this and more this Thursday in Elna at a conference open to everyone."
"The red thread that has marked my political commitment has remained indelible despite the adversities that I have had to confront for eight years, especially hard for six and a half years," the former president has previously alleged, who has been meditating for days whether he now It is the best time to head the Junts list for the Parliament. Until recently it seemed clear that the best option in the formation was for Puigdemont to lead the list for the European elections alone, but the electoral leader of Pere Aragonès, faced with the impossibility of carrying out the budgets, has precipitated everything and Junts may find themselves doomed to readjust their initial plans.
Yesterday, Sunday, the general secretary of JxCat, Jordi Turull, already announced that this week the leader of JxCat will be known. Everyone – he too – assumes that it will be Puigdemont. “We are hopeful that starting next week a stage of excitement and hope will begin; we will have the best candidate to define the four years to come, a president with the nation in his head and in his heart,” he said. from Fontanilles (Baix Empordà), in reference to Puigdemont, who, in his opinion, will contribute “ambition for the country and solvency”, not only to relaunch the independence project, but also to “recover the prestige of public services”, after the years of Esquerra government.
Everything seems to indicate that the former Catalan president, now an MEP, will put his all into the race on May 12 and that he will renounce being the candidate for the European elections in June, which was what he had planned before the surprise electoral advance. . This has been pointed out in recent days by various sources and MEP Toni Comín even reinforced that idea this weekend by stating in an interview in Vilaweb that he could lead the JxCat candidacy on June 9 if Puigdemont does not do so.
Puigdemont's lawyer, Gonzalo Boye, assured on Friday that if his client is in a position to be sworn in as president of the Generalitat after the elections, he is willing to run the risk of being arrested considering that the Amnesty law approved on Thursday in the Congress will already be in force by then and "each person must assume their actions," in a veiled warning addressed to the judges.
Boye, asked about the possibility that if he wins the elections and can be sworn in, he crosses the border and could be arrested, acknowledged that "it is a possibility, but what will not be able to prevent him from being president of the Generalitat." "When the president makes a decision he is going to take it to the end, that means that he is going to stand where he has to stand," insisted the lawyer, who pointed out that this is precisely Pedro's "fear" and "nervousness." Sánchez and Pere Aragonès, "that he can run for elections, that he wins them and that he can also be sworn in as president of Catalonia."
