The dispute for the presidency of the Generalitat, on May 12, is a three-way affair and Esquerra tried to take the lead yesterday in front of its competitors. The formation parked the battery of proposals of the last few days formulated by the Government and descended into the mud: it raised the decibels by charging against the PSC, above all, and Junts – the target was its leader, Carles Puigdemont. The party, in addition, vindicated its action at the head of the Executive in front of the Arc de Triomf, in Barcelona, in an event for Republic Day.
President Pere Aragonès attacked his rivals from the first minute and pointed out that "Salvador Illa's project is Spain, Carles Puigdemont's is Carles Puigdemont". "ERC's is Catalonia", he countered. The president also showed off the "responsibility" of his party. "Out of responsibility we have remained silent, because we have preferred to be responsible than to respond to unfair accusations, because we had a goal", said the also national coordinator of the training. "But today, before those who lie, before those who sell smoke and build castles of cards and those who want power to deliver it to Moncloa, we must speak", continued the head of the Catalan Executive, with wishes to socialists and post-convergents.
Thursday's Illa conference, in which he promised more self-government and better funding, was the subject of criticism from the president, for substance and form. "The PSC neither wants nor will get better funding for Catalonia", warned Aragonès. "Their criterion will always be to follow the dictates of Moncloa, they are complicit in the economic suffocation of the country", he postulated. As an example of this, he pointed to the low budgetary execution of the State in Catalonia and the problems of Rodalies.
Drawing on this same thread, Aragonès asserted that the Socialists will not defend Catalan. "In its most institutional act [the conference] they change the language at the first", he affirmed. The PSC calls for eliminating "linguistic immersion and imposing trilingualism", continued the president. "Red stays orange", he finished. "With the PSC, no language, no trains, no country. Without resources and without language there is no country", concluded the president.
To JxCat - and to the commons -, the head of the Government reproached him for the "irresponsibility" of not supporting the budgets. Likewise, he questioned the return that his candidate promises whatever the electoral result. "The third is the good one. Or maybe not. The people of ERC never give up, and if it is more difficult even less", said Aragonès, referring to the return of the former president and the departure of Junts de l'Executiu Catalan. "His proposal is a name, ours is a country", he later compared.
In this same sense, the deputy general secretary of ERC, Marta Vilalta, spoke, who also emphasized that Josep Rull is on the 12-M de Junts lists and that Jordi Turull can campaign "in freedom" thanks to them . "Today we see how the third Junts candidate can be a candidate and the general secretary of Junts can campaign freely thanks to ERC", he stressed.
