"Neither fish nor cove". This is the expression used by the spokesman for Junts per Catalunya and vice president of the formation, Josep Rius, to refer to the Esquerra Republicana strategy in Madrid, in the Congress of Deputies, based on the results obtained by the party in negotiations with the government.
The leader of JxCat spoke this way this Monday at the press conference after the executive meeting, after last week Gabriel Rufián, leader of ERC in the Lower House, pointed out to the president of the confederal group of United We Can, Jaume Asens, who "stopped going to Waterloo", where the still president of Junts, Carles Puigdemont, resides. An issue that added another notch to the bar that measures the disagreements between the partners of the Government of the Generalitat.
"Some independence leaders should worry less about what happens in Waterloo and worry more about what happens in Congress," Rius pointed out, after recalling that the ERC's pacts with the PSOE to shield immersion, for the audiovisual law or for the dialogue table it has not worked. The JxCat spokesman recalled that the Republicans gave their support to the general state budgets in exchange for the audiovisual law that Oriol Junqueras's later did not approve. "Neither peix, nor cove", Rius has reiterated.
About Rufián's words, from Junts they believe that it is a "smokescreen" to cover the results of the Republican strategy in Madrid. In addition, Rius has once again insisted that there should be unity for the independence movement in the Lower House. "When it comes to saving Spain, the PSOE and the PP make a common front. The independence movement should take note and learn the lesson", he concluded.
In another order of things, the Junts spokesperson welcomed the fact that the formation already has more than 100 candidates proclaimed for the municipal elections of 2023, and the fact that in municipalities such as Reus or Vilafranca del Penedès , the mayors of the PDECat, Carles Pellicer and Pere Regull, have decided not to appear and make way for those of Junts, Maite Pallarès and Aureli Ruiz.
In Barcelona, on the other hand, the formation still does not have a candidate, although there are some names that have come up in recent hours, such as that of the deputy and lawyer Jaume Alonso Cuevillas, from the circle of trust of the next president of the party, Laura Borràs. Rius, in this regard, has indicated that the candidate will be chosen in a primary process, as established by the statutes and has denied that the matter has been addressed by the executive.
"We reiterate the call to join forces around Junts, to guarantee pro-independence mayoralties, that is why the votes must be concentrated in Junts," said the spokesperson for the formation, who has asked that situations such as those of Sant Cugat, Tàrrega or Figueres, where tripartite municipal governments have deprived JxCat of leading the mayor's office.
Regarding the decree that the Government has approved this midday on Catalan in schools, Rius has stressed that without the presence of his training in the Catalan Executive, the decree would not have been approved. "Confrontation against unfair judicial decisions. If Junts were not in the Government today, this decree would not be approved to face the sentence," summarized the leader of JxCat, who highlighted that this measure "protects teachers and foresees the rejection explicit to the quotas in education" that he has described as "pedagogically aberrant".
In this sense, Rius has also pointed out that the agreement of March 24 between the four formations that have agreed on a new law indicated that the linguistic project was validated in each center by the management and not in the Ministry of Education. "It is not true that between the agreement of March 24 and that of May 24 nothing has changed. The directors are protected and there is an explicit rejection of the percentages and quotas provided for in the sentence. The Catalan school model is protected", has summarized.
However, he has predicted that the decree "will not stop the Spanish justice system, ready to end the linguistic immersion model" with the help of PP, Ciudadanos and Vox. "The courts will once again attack the Catalan school and we will stand up to it with the legal instruments that the current model allows us. The Catalan school model will not be fully protected without its own state", he concluded.
