Josep Rull says that Junts' absolute priority is to rebuild unity among independentists, Salvador Illa does not raise an eyebrow, and Pere Aragonès smiles. Junts and ERC mark each other without attacking each other excessively and join together to question the PSC about the pacts after 12-M. They are the three candidates with dark ties in the La Vanguardia and RAC1 debate. The polls not only place Illa in front, but post-electoral alliances could be simplified if his predictions came true. Better two allies than three in the government – except if the two are ERC and Junts. And a question is repeated in the circles of advisors. What ERC will do with your votes.
The debate confirms that Illa is the undaunted candidate. The absent Pedro Sánchez has mobilized the Catalan socialists more than a rally. Or five. Those that he had planned for the PSC campaign; and a giant screen with the message “We are with you president” acts as a catalyst for the socialist vote. The candidate is once again Sánchez, in the role of victim, at least until Monday. Illa is convinced that he is capable of managing any decision made by the President of the Government, although facing the campaign standing up to the right and the extreme right is not the same as facing the campaign immersed in an internal debate about unwanted successions in the PSOE.
With the polls in hand, the PSC campaign ran the risk of suffering from the winner's syndrome: activated militancy, the vote leaks overcome by an electorally amortized amnesty law and with Junts and ERC waging the umpteenth dispute. Sánchez is now the destabilizing element. Also for the plans of the independence movement.
Aragonès and Puigdemont have shown the right empathy with Pedro and reproach Sánchez. If the PSC criticized the former president's personalism, his campaign now depends on the president. Sánchez, absent until his appearance on Monday, has stolen the focus from Puigdemont, who is absent from the debates. He even conditions the Junts program. The former president assures that he does not care who governs in Madrid, but just yesterday he linked the approval of general state budgets to the achievement of a fiscal pact for Catalonia. The budgets are further away today than yesterday and on Monday... Puigdemont and Oriol Junqueras may be calculating for a new investiture or the umpteenth campaign.
Pending the Moncloa and asking that Catalonia be the protagonist. It is the paradox of an electoral race in which independence has given way to financing reform. “We have returned to debates from ten years ago,” complains the CUP. Illa's plans do not even include reforming the Statute and, in those of ERC and Junts, the referendum is a demand but not an urgency. The negotiation proposed by the independentists may fit within the current institutional margins, even if it puts stress on them. As long as Sánchez's decision allows it...
