The last train of Laura Borràs as president of the Parliament has already left the station. What the president of Junts did not expect is that her supervening disqualification would end up becoming a pure parliamentary procedure at the gates of the electoral campaign in which the post-convergents are risking her future. The leadership of the party, including the president, agreed weeks ago on the course of the case and its institutional resolution. It never occurs to anyone not to propose a replacement from Junts to the presidency of the Chamber, the main institutional position that they occupy from the opposition. Another thing is the presidency of the party. The only plausible solution right now is to cool down the debate, they admit in the management. Jordi Turull defends that Borràs is an "asset" of Junts, who is now competing with the reunification of the convergent space that embodies the candidacy of Xavier Trias.
It is not expected that the replacement in Parliament will rush into the campaign. The activity of the Chamber will be minimal until June, and Junts has tried to delimit the area of action of the storming. The most pragmatic would even have applauded the intervention of Alejandro Fernández (PP) in plenary session lamenting that Borràs takes advantage of the "devotion" of his followers to have Parliament "bogged down": "you hurt yourself and you hurt others this institution. Reflect."
The internal struggle buried in Junts contrasts with the ERC's attempts to ignore the case until the Borràs train leaves the institutional framework. The Republicans have jumped on another train turned into an electoral opportunity. Months ago they devised a campaign with the chronic chaos of Rodalies as the protagonist: it unifies the discourse of its candidates from the metropolitan area and allows attacking the image of reliability of Salvador Illa and his PSC. The incidence in the Gavà station is extra coal for the electoral machinery. Oriol Junqueras –with two Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat stations in Sant Vicenç dels Horts– came out for votes on the R2 line, exposing the deficiencies in the service at each stop. And the climatic observation of a gentleman from Viladecans led the Ministry of Territories to disarm the destructive ray theory to which Adif attributed the possible cause of the incident that torments the PSC.
That Meteocat ends up being an active protagonist in a perennial infrastructure crisis is the height of institutional mistrust, but the electoral race between Republicans and Socialists goes through using even the electrical discharges of a storm to refute hypotheses still under investigation and delve into the wound of the infrastructures.
There was no lightning strike and, even if there was, the problem stems from a series of investor negligence dating back decades and failed budget negotiations. And with the passengers resigned on the platform, Junqueras attacks the PSC: "that they assume their responsibilities"; Carles Puigdemont to ERC: "they give oxygen to the Spanish government to humiliate us a little more every day"; and Borràs… to Trias? The candidate claims to speed up the transfer of Rodalies and Borràs adds that "the train that is most delayed is the one that stops at the independence station."
Illa takes cover after the dispute between independentistas. Minister Raquel Sánchez is in charge of explaining to her neighbors in Gavà – she was the mayor for seven years – that they have kept half of the trains due to “an unforeseeable fortuitous event” and to assure all Catalans that “more than never". It is not the first time that the PSC has faced a Rodalies crisis. In 2007 José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero came to visit the Bellvitge neighborhood, in l'Hospitalet de Llobregat, to sing the mea culpa for the 42-day railway stoppage due to the sinkholes caused by the AVE works. The visit relieved the PSC, with José Montilla in the presidency of the Generalitat, and served to confirm Magdalena Álvarez at the head of Fomento: "I am not leaving because running is for cowards." It didn't end well. The former minister was sentenced to 9 years of disqualification by the ERE in Andalusia.
Then came the first massive demonstration of catalans emprenyats, the germ of the process. With no civil society to unite, the parties compete to turn discontent into votes. By Rodalies, the chaos of the oppositions or the drought. Will the rebellion be at the polls?
