Junts per Catalunya begins a new stage tomorrow in a conclave in Argelers, in which its main leader, Carles Puigdemont, will step down as party president. The congressional process will take until mid-July: first, the replacement of the leadership is voted on, with Laura Borràs as president and Jordi Turull as general secretary, and in a month the political course will be redefined in a second meeting at La Farga de l 'Hospitalet de Llobregat, with the debate on a new paper and the modification of the statutes.
The pact sealed in extremis at the beginning of May between the two leaders who will take the reins tomorrow, after weeks of uncertainty, avoided the risk of fracture in Junts, at a time when the founding period, which began in the summer of 2020 after an express divorce with the PDECat, and it is intended to gain momentum forward.
In the words of the secretary general until now, Jordi Sànchez, JxCat must come of age in this new stage, and be a strong and orderly party, the main pending issue in these two years. Thus, in the south of France, in the region of Catalunya del Nord, the formation will take its first steps towards that goal without Puigdemont, a factor of cohesion and an undisputed figure. So much so that all the leaders assure that their leadership will remain in force even if they do not hold any organic position.
Now Junts aspires to consolidate a brand and a space, also locally and throughout the territory, where he amassed a good inheritance from that divorce with the heirs of Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya.
With these wickers, more than a congress, the formation celebrates a political meeting tomorrow – in which Sànchez, Puigdemont, Turull and Borràs take part – since the half distribution in the new direction has already been decided. There will be no confrontation of candidates and projects, but that does not mean that there can be no surprises. With the voting thermometer it will be seen how much support each leader arouses among the bases.
In addition, the previous week has not exactly been a path of roses for the formation, especially for Borràs. On Tuesday, the general secretary of the Parliament that she appointed presented her resignation after a new controversy, this time related to the hiring of her son as an usher. But her resignation has not yet been accepted by the president of the Chamber. As if all this mess were not enough, on Thursday some voice messages from Borràs were leaked regarding the case of the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes (ILC), for which she is accused in the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC). In them she is interested in the investigation of the Mossos in 2018, when she was already a deputy of the Parliament, and she asks about the payment of the contracts for which she is being investigated.
The matter has not gone unnoticed in Junts and in Argelers it will be seen if all this takes its toll -Borràs has so far had unquestionable support among the associates in all the primaries-, and how the militancy values the pact between families without a sheet capital route, agreed.
All this will be decided in July and there are pending debates that could strain the seams of the pact, such as what to do with the agreement between the Barcelona Provincial Council and the PSC, with the pact in the Government with Esquerra, and what alliances can be woven in the municipal level in the next electoral cycle.
Once the founding process has concluded, all the organic machinery will focus on the 2023 elections, since in less than a year Junts will face its first municipal elections. With the call for the conclave there has been a moment of impasse on that flank, but today JxCat has about 100 proclaimed candidates and the guarantee that it will not have to face the heirs of Convergència in most municipalities. It is not trivial, since in JxCat they believe that they would have surpassed Esquerra in the elections for the Parliament of 2021 and that today they would have the presidency of the Generalitat if it were not for the PDECat, which added more than 70,000 votes.
In places like Reus or Vilafranca del Penedès, for example, it has already been confirmed that the current mayors, Carles Pellicer and Pere Regull, will not present themselves and will make way for the Junts candidates, Teresa Pallarès and Aureli Ruiz.
Last Saturday the party held a municipal convention in Reus, just one year before the municipal ones, and set itself the goal of leading the consistories in the regional capitals, and that there be more pro-independence mayors. For this they propose management and put Catalan municipalism at the service of independence. The unknown, pending the debate that will take place in July, lies in the pact policy of the party and whether or not it will agree with the Socialists.
Part of the work has been carried out by Jordi Sànchez, who was the general secretary, and David Saldoni, who was the organization secretary and, after the second phase of the congress, in July, he will become the deputy general secretary and Turull's right-hand man in the city board. But for this, it will be necessary to modify the statutes, just as it must be done so that the figure of the presidency of JxCat has executive functions, as agreed.
Another song is the city of Barcelona. Elsa Artadi unexpectedly resigned from being the mayoral candidate in early May, although she had been proclaimed without opponents in February, and she has stopped all political activity. The forecasts are not good for Junts in the Catalan capital and the formation must choose, in a primary process, a new leader. But the issue has not yet been addressed while waiting for the new leadership to formally start her mandate. Meanwhile, in the waiting time, the dance of names has already begun.
