The Partit Demòcrata Europeu Català, PDECat, has decided this Saturday to put an end to its political career, seven years after its founding. The formation has made the decision to cease all its activity in an extraordinary national congress.
After the divorce with Junts per Catalunya and Carles Puigdemont, the party was left out of the Parliament of Catalonia in the February 2021 elections and also became an extra-parliamentary force in the Congress of Deputies last July with the Espai CiU brand, in the general elections. Given the results, the group has advocated for its dissolution, as expected after the polls last summer.
The party led by David Bonvehí since 2018 has made the decision in an extraordinary congress held in the Urgell civic center in Barcelona to which all the militancy that has remained faithful to the PDECat project was summoned. The conclave had been convened with the pretext of evaluating the future scenarios of the party's political activity.
There was more than one entry option on the table, although everything seemed to indicate that dissolution, sooner or later, was the most likely. Other options were a statutory change and becoming a municipal party or articulating a new organization upon understanding that the PDECat cycle and brand was exhausted. Finally it was decided to lower the blinds.
The nearly 200 councilors and the few mayors that the post-convergent formation achieved in the elections last May will continue to be active and linked through the Ara Pacte Local platform, which is the brand with which they went to the polls on the 28th. May, in coalition with other municipal forces.
In any case, the PDECat arrived at those elections weakened by the hostile takeover bid by Junts, which convinced many mayors and councilors who had not taken the step in 2020 when the paths of both organizations separated.
In the economic sphere, the training will finish paying its debts to suppliers and workers next December and is up to date with payments, after containing spending in the last two campaigns, so it is avoiding bankruptcy for the moment.
Thus, the formation now enters a phase of liquidation pending the courts, since for now the PDECat is being prosecuted in the 3% case in the National Court, awaiting trial, and will have to sit on the bench. those accused of being the successor of Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC). In the case of the Palau case, for now, the training has evaded the responsibilities that belong to CDC, but the resolutions adopted by the courts are not yet final.
Several political brands emerged from the implosion of CDC and the end of the Convergència i Unió federation, but in recent years they have been grouping together and clarifying the political map. Centrem, which tried to unite all that post-convergent space outside of Junts and Puigdemont under the leadership of former councilor Àngels Chacón, is also in the process of liquidation and other brands such as Lliures, the party of Antoni Fernández Teixidó, or the Lliga Democràtica had already stopped operate to group together in Centrem, which shortly after its turbulent foundation entered into crisis due to the departure of its leader. The same happens with the Partit Nacionalista Català (PNC) founded by Marta Pascal in 2020 and which, after competing in the Parliamentary elections with those from Bonvehí, ended up hand in hand with the PDECat in the last electoral cycle. Thus, in the post-convergent space JxCat remains the main formation. On a much smaller level, Convergents continues for the moment, the formation of Germà Gordó, which since the divorce of Bonvehí and Puigdemont has converged with the PDECat.
To those brands we must add Democrats of Catalonia, the party of Antoni Castellà, which brought together the independenceists of the Unió Democràtica de Catalunya, and United per Avançar, which competes in the polls with the PSC and is commanded by Ramon Espadaler. Other projects have fallen by the wayside, such as the Crida Nacional, which never saw the light of day, or Action for the Republic, which was established as a party in 2019, although its leaders are in JxCat, with Aurora Madaula at the head.
