Esquerra has found in the candidate for mayor of Barcelona, Xavier Trias, the vein to enter piecework against Junts per Catalunya to defend his municipal project. And even if it is miles away from the capital. Like Oriol Junqueras, who today in Girona has continued to attribute the organization of 1-O to his party, posing it as the only clearly pro-independence party, in contrast to JxCat, a party that he has accused of "going back, hiding and being ashamed" of the pro-independence movement. Ernest Maragall finished off the job from Barcelona: "Trias's offer is the Convergència of 3%".
For the ERC leader, in Junts, with Trias at the helm, "they sense that to stay in power" they have to hide independence, "and they do not hesitate to say that Convergència has returned." In fact, Junqueras has presented Junts as a formation that acts according to the wind blows and in the same way that he has assured that today the post-convergents, in his opinion, deny the movement, in Girona he has used the newspaper library to express that it was "the force and persistence” of the Republicans in independence, which pushed the CDC ten years ago – a formation to which JxCat is the heir – to “declare itself as an independentist” to, at that time, retain the presidency of the Generalitat.
“Mr. Xavier Trias gives us the recipe: get annoyed. Well, this country doesn't have to bother. We want this country to get away with it and we have always been pro-independence, we are now and we will continue to be", the ERC president pointed out.
ERC has attended the campaign event in Girona with the baggage of its four councillors, who are part of a municipal government led by Marta Madrenas, from Junts. The Republicans are the fourth force in the city and the mayoralty is more than complicated. Madrenas began her term governing in a minority, but a year later was when Esquerra became part of the municipal government. Quim Ayats, ERC candidate and first deputy mayor, today attributed that decision to "responsibility". Ayats and the other three Republican councilors entered 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, a year after Madrenas was appointed mayor.
But the pact politically benefited both formations: Junts achieved a certain stability, while the Republicans set foot in an institution that they have not been able to lead since the Second Republic.
Madrenas decided months ago not to run for mayor de nuevo. He has governed since 2016, when Carles Puigdemont left his position in the City Council after being named president of the Generalitat. In his place, the JxCat candidate is the former Minister of Universities, Gemma Geis.
Quim Ayats is the first ERC candidate to repeat as number one. He garnered more votes in 2019 than the Republicans had in 2015, but moved from second to fourth strength.
In Girona, the ERC campaign event was attended by Marta Vilalta, deputy general secretary, the former minister of Treball Dolors Bassa, and Quim Nadal, minister of Universitats i Recerca and who was mayor of the city from 1979 to 2002 when he was listed in the PSC lists. Vilalta has wanted to break with the supposed impossibility of her formation being done with the mayor's office, giving as an example the modification of the Penal Code, which eliminated the crime of sedition. Even so, she has warned that "siren songs are sounding again" of possible "conservative alliances" in Catalonia between socialists and post-convergents. “We are not going to bother each other and we will work to make the change possible. We will not get annoyed or resign ourselves ”, she has affirmed, resorting to the words of Trias yesterday. Bassa has stressed that he does not accept lessons from a formation, he has assured, from which some of his ministers left the Government before 1-O.
Ayats, for his part, has puffed up the management of ERC in the city council. He has ensured that his team has unlocked the House of Culture, by obtaining financing. In addition, he has boasted of carrying out housing policies, mobilizing 300 homes with an investment of 4 million euros in purchase and rehabilitation "And that could not wait." In the field of education, she has highlighted the equity plan, which, according to her, has allowed the segregation rate to drop in Girona's schools.
