The mayor of Reus, Carles Pellicer, has abandoned the PDeCAT militancy after having differences with the party's decision to form a coalition with the Ara Catalunya platform in the municipal elections next May. Pellicer is one of the mayors who continued in the heir formation of Convergència Democràtica after the passage of Carles Puigdemont and hundreds of militants to Junts. The dismissal of Pellicer and also of the Reus councilors comes shortly after Xavier Trias's decision to leave the PDeCAT and choose Junts, an action that is explained by the proximity of the local elections.
Carles Pellicer -mayor since 2011 and former deputy in the Parlament and former senator for CiU- had already announced some time ago that he would leave the first political line once his term in the Reus town hall ended. Now he chooses to break the party card after knowing the coalition that the PDeCAT has created with the municipalist formation Ara Catalunya (under the name of Ara Pacte Local) for the elections of May 28, 2023. Ara Catalunya has its origin in Ara Reus and its visible head, Daniel Rubio, is a councilor in the city council.
Pellicer alleges that he had already had differences with the management in recent times and that with this agreement "the situation is aggravated and trust is betrayed." The mayor criticizes that the PDeCAT executive has not consulted the agreement with the mayors and the militants. Even so, he will continue to carry out his duties at Reus City Council until the end of his term, heading a government made up of Junts per Reus and ERC. The relief of him as mayor will be taken by Teresa Pallarès, a member of Junts and a former deputy in the Parliament.
With this step, Pellicer breaks with a party to which he remained faithful despite the loss of casualties that occurred at the end of the summer of 2020 with the split of the Junts space. PDeCAT councilors Josep Cuerba, Mariluz Caballero, Montserrat Caelles and Hipòlit Montseny have also made the same decision.
Pellicer's departure is a severe blow for the PDeCAT, which loses one of the most important mayoralties it held until now. The party that Artur Mas promoted in 2016 currently maintains four deputies in the Congress of Deputies and dozens of councilors and mayors in the Catalan territory, as is the case of Vilafranca del Penedès, Mollerussa or Gironella, among others.
The decision of the current mayor of Reus comes just after the one made by the former mayor of Barcelona Xavier Trias to leave the PDeCAT. Trias had double militancy (also Junts) until now and has finally opted to continue militating only in the party led by Laura Borràs and Jordi Turull. This step could bring Trias closer to ending up deciding to run again in the Barcelona municipal elections, a possibility that he has been seriously considering since before the summer, but on which he has not yet announced the verdict.
