In case anyone had any doubts, the scenography of today's event, a secret kept under lock and key until an hour before the starting gun of the Junts electoral campaign, made the panorama clear. A giant blue canvas with the words President Carles Puigdemont, without a party logo, was the backdrop for the former Catalan president's conference this Thursday in Elna (France), in which he announced that he will be the Junts per Catalunya candidate. in the Parliament elections on May 12 and has confirmed that he will put his all into the Catalan race, which will start in just over a month.
The leader of JxCat will not be the candidate in the European elections on June 9, a movement that shows faith and confidence that the final approval of the Amnesty law in a few weeks will be a turning point and will change the legal horizon of those prosecuted by the process and 1-O. "So that no one has any doubt and no one speculates, I have decided to resign from being part of the list for the elections to the European Parliament," he stated shortly after confirming that he wants to aspire to the presidency of the Generalitat again. "Let it be clear that this [the 12-M elections] is my priority," he added.
By resigning from the elections to the European Parliament on June 9, Puigdemont will lose some prerogatives conferred by the MEP act, such as the legal immunity that in recent years has allowed him to move around Europe freely.
Thus, 30 kilometers from the border, in a total electoral campaign atmosphere, with all the staging taken care of in detail, and with a thousand people gathered to hear his announcement – 1,400 according to the party – among those who have filled out the Town Hall assembly hall and those that have gathered in an annex outside, Puigdemont has starred in the first major JxCat event of the electoral campaign, in which he intends to articulate a speech around the idea of "restitution" of the president who in October 2017, after the application of 155, went to Belgium.
That was the starting point of his intervention and he then closed the circle by pointing out that now "the opportunity to make restitution possible" opens up. "I propose my candidacy for restitution to the presidency of the Generalitat," he stressed. "Bon Govern and restitution at the service of citizens," he promised just before putting on the table the possibility of a unitary list with the rest of the pro-independence formations, although that today may be "preaching in the desert." "My candidacy will have to go beyond what my party is, it is already a bit of the tradition of the house. We will incorporate profiles from other sectors," he assured. "The party is a tool, not a purpose," he concluded. The fact that there were no logos on the stage and that the color was not the usual green of Junts but a blue inspired by the colors of the Palau de la Generalitat a few years ago, at the time when Convergència led the administration. A clue to the transversality sought by the former Catalan president, who has combined in his speech the independence commitment with issues related to management, such as education, housing or excess bureaucracy.
Elna's choice was not random. It is the first town in the region of Catalunya de Nord that approved Catalan as an official language and played a key role in welcoming the exiles that Puigdemont himself highlighted at the beginning of his speech. Likewise, this location makes it possible for the sovereigntist leader to have the support of the senior staff of his party as well as the intermediate cadres and the militancy, who have moved en bloc to the town, crossing the border.
Although there was a lot of expectation before the rally, there was little surprise in the announcement, no matter how much it is always said that in Junts at the last minute there could be an unexpected outcome. Since President Pere Aragonès announced the electoral advance on Wednesday of last week, everyone in JxCat had pointed out the founder of the formation, although since the summer of 2022 he has had no organic positions and had hinted on some occasions that he would not return. to present.
In fact, the president's reply did not take long to arrive. The general secretary, Jordi Turull, put his name in the spotlight from Barcelona and Puigdemont himself picked up the gauntlet from Strasbourg when he confirmed that he could be back in Catalonia for an investiture debate within a few months.
Thus, the mystery of recent days has been put to an end. The call for the elections has modified the former president's initial forecast. He himself confirmed it at first, since his plans included being a JxCat candidate in the European elections on June 9 and returning to Catalonia at the earliest in the fall if the Amnesty law was applied without problems.
